The Great Convergence, Information Technology and the New Globalization

Richard Baldwin

ISBN 10: 067466048X / ISBN 13: 9780674660489

Published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England, 2016

About this Item

First Printing. Crisp clean unclipped dust-jacket, fresh covers with silver lettering on spine, tight binding, clean pages and end-papers . Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: under 1 kg. ISBN: 067466048X. ISBN/EAN: 9780674660489. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 22022021047. All our books are sent by tracked mail.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Great Convergence, Information Technology and the New Globalization
• Publisher: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067466048X
• ISBN 13: 9780674660489
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Business, Finance and Management

About this title

Synopsis

Between 1820 and 1990, the share of world income going to today’s wealthy nations soared from twenty percent to almost seventy. Since then, that share has plummeted to where it was in 1900. As Richard Baldwin explains, this reversal of fortune reflects a new age of globalization that is drastically different from the old.

In the 1800s, globalization leaped forward when steam power and international peace lowered the costs of moving goods across borders. This triggered a self-fueling cycle of industrial agglomeration and growth that propelled today’s rich nations to dominance. That was the Great Divergence. The new globalization is driven by information technology, which has radically reduced the cost of moving ideas across borders. This has made it practical for multinational firms to move labor-intensive work to developing nations. But to keep the whole manufacturing process in sync, the firms also shipped their marketing, managerial, and technical know-how abroad along with the offshored jobs. The new possibility of combining high tech with low wages propelled the rapid industrialization of a handful of developing nations, the simultaneous deindustrialization of developed nations, and a commodity supercycle that is only now petering out. The result is today’s Great Convergence.

Because globalization is now driven by fast-paced technological change and the fragmentation of production, its impact is more sudden, more selective, more unpredictable, and more uncontrollable. As The Great Convergence shows, the new globalization presents rich and developing nations alike with unprecedented policy challenges in their efforts to maintain reliable growth and social cohesion.

About the Author

Richard Baldwin is Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London.