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HONG KONG South Korean stocks edged higher on Friday as major auto and electronic makers advanced even as steel makers and banks slipped in thin trading in the absence of cues from Wall Street and Japan. The benchmark Kospi rose 0.2% to 1,903.76, with Hyundai Motor Co. climbing 1.9% and heavyweight Samsung Electronics Co. rising 0.7%. Steel major Posco dropped 0.8% and Shinhan Financial Group Co. slipped 0.4%. While U.S. markets were closed overnight for Thanksgiving and the Japanese market was shut Friday for a holiday, European stocks had climbed on Thursday, offering a positive lead. Elsewhere in the region, [...]

Boeing Co announced a major restructuring of its defense division on Wednesday that will cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels, close facilities in California and consolidate several business units to cut costs. The company told employees about the changes ahead of the planned announcement set for later Wednesday, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters. Boeing, the Pentagon’s second-largest supplier, said the changes were the latest step in an affordability drive that has already reduced the company’s costs by $ 2.2 billion since 2010, according to the document. (Reporting By Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Alwyn Scott and Maureen Bavdek)

A pair of studies from a leading credit reporting agency shows that credit card use continues to stabilize, especially in parts of the country hit hardest by the recession. Equifax’s recent National Consumer Credit Trends Report measured increases in auto loans, student loans, and new credit cards. Meanwhile, a study of regional credit card debt shows that overall balances keep shrinking in cities where consumers bore the brunt of unemployment and declining home prices. For the first time since April 2010, the number of open American credit card accounts topped 300 million. While credit limits on those cards have risen [...]

GENEVA The world’s biggest economies, especially the European Union and Japan are using protectionist policies that fly below the World Trade Organization’s radar, according to a forthcoming study by two experts. The study, by Vinod Aggarwal, professor of political science at Berkeley, and Simon Evenett, professor of international trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen, examined seven major economies and 869 non-macroeconomic trade policies they have taken since the financial crisis began. “During the period November 2008-May 2012 there was considerable resort to less transparent policy instruments (so called ���murky protectionism’) and to policy instruments that are [...]

A senior Treasury official on Friday urged all major economies to continue to provide support for recovery with a focus on efforts by Europe to navigate through their fiscal and financial system challenges. The official also said that it is important that those efforts are coupled with efforts by China to continue to provide support for growth with an emphasis on shifting their economy onto domestic consumers rather than relying excessively on exports. The official added that it is also critically important to create a balanced relationship between U.S. and China according to international standards on intellectual property and an [...]

Consumer electronics giant Sony (SNE) agreed on Friday to buy a significant share in Olympus for $ 640 million, enhancing its portfolio of technologies for the medical field. The company’s will combine Olympus’s lens and optical technologies with Sony’s range of digital imaging technologies to better perform in the rapidly growing medical market. “As part of our strategic initiatives announced in April 2012, at Sony we are aggressively pursuing the growth of our medical business, with the aim of developing it into a key pillar of our overall business portfolio,” Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai said in a statement. The Tokyo-based [...]

Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group, which assembles Apple’s iPhones (AAPL) and makes components for top global electronics companies, closed a plant in China on Monday after about 2,000 workers were involved in a brawl at a company dormitory. It was not clear how long the shutdown would last at the plant, which employs about 79,000 people in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan, while police and company officials investigate the cause of the disturbance. Foxconn said the trouble started with a personal row that blew up into a brawl. But some people posting messages on a Twitter-like site said factory guards [...]

If you’ve just packed one (or more!) kids off to college, you’re probably still reeling from the aftershock of writing that hefty tuition check. And possibly wondering if the money’s really worth it. The short answer: yes. Individuals who graduate with at least a four-year college degree earn on average 84% more than workers with a high school diploma. Taking it a step further, recent research by Jon James, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland illustrates that a student’s choice of a major is a significant factor in determining her earning power after graduation.  Not surprisingly, his [...]

Pakistani villagers carry bananas at a field in Mirpur Khas in the flood-hit Sindh province on September 28, 2011. Monsoon floods that sunk Pakistan’s arable belt for a second year running have piled economic woes on top of a humanitarian catastrophe facing up to 8 million people in the south. Pakistani villagers work in an onion field in Tando Allahyar in the flood-hit Sindh province on September 28, 2011. Corn rots, damaged by severe drought on a farm near Bruceville, Indiana, on August 16, 2012. Record heat throughout the U.S. farm belt states have curtailed crop production and likely will [...]

LOS ANGELES Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is expected to win a major victory Friday on his top policy goal — the doubling of the national consumption tax — in exchange for calling new elections, reports said. The consumption tax hike, to 10% in two stages by 2015, marks the first change to the politically sensitive levy in 18 years, according to Kyodo News. The passage follows Noda’s survival of no-confidence tabled by an alliance of minor parties late Thursday, as reports were already saying Noda had struck a deal for the tax-hike to clear the upper house of the [...]