The debate on globalization has reached a level of intensity that inhibits comprehension and obscures the issues. In this book a highly distinguished international economist scrupulously explains how globalization works as a concept and how it operates in reality. Martin Wolf confronts the charges against globalization, delivers a devastating critique of each, and offers a realistic scenario for economic internationalism in the future.

Wolf begins by outlining the history of the global economy in the twentieth century and explaining the mechanics of world trade. He dissects the agenda of globalization�s critics, and rebuts the arguments that it undermines sovereignty, weakens democracy, intensifies inequality, privileges the multinational corporation, and devastates the environment. The author persuasively defends the principles of international economic integration, arguing that the biggest obstacle to global economic progress has been the failure not of the market but of politics and government, in rich countries as well as poor. He examines the threat that terrorism poses and maps the way to a global market economy that can work for everyone.

Martin Wolf is associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times in London. Formerly senior economist at the World Bank�s division for international trade, he has worked in Kenya, Zambia, and India. He has been visiting professor at Oxford, Nottingham, and Rotterdam Universities and fellow of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Reviews

The author, a Financial Times editor, makes a conventional economist's argument for globalization that is not likely to convince many skeptics. His faith is that growth and everything else good comes from "the market," while any problems with globalization must be the fault of governments. Wolf doesn't consider that economic processes redistribute power and therefore transform politics and the possibilities of government action. Like so many economists, he analyzes primarily aggregate statistics: gray averages. For example, using aggregate figures he argues that workers in rich countries are paid more because they are much more productive than workers in poor countries are. Thus high-paid workers need not fear that competition from low-paid workers will undermine their economic security. The reason, he explains, is that workers in developed countries work, on average, with far less capital per worker. While this is true in aggregate, for a particular transnational firm deciding whether to locate a new factory in Shanghai or Chicago, the difference in productivity will rarely be as great as the wage differential. Therefore, as long as other costs and risks do not overwhelm the benefit of cheaper labor, there is a long-term tendency for investment and jobs to flow toward low-wage countries. Wolf neglects the profound consequences of relative labor immobility (because of immigration restrictions and cultural barriers) compared with the mobility of products, many services and capital, one of the characteristic features of contemporary globalization.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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