Skip to main content

Challenges to Globalization

Analyzing the Economics

People passionately disagree about the nature of the globalization process. The failure of both the 1999 and 2003 World Trade Organization’s (WTO) ministerial conferences in Seattle and Cancun, respectively, have highlighted the tensions among official, international organizations like the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, nongovernmental and private sector organizations, and some developing country governments. These tensions are commonly attributed to longstanding disagreements over such issues as labor rights, environmental standards, and tariff-cutting rules. In addition, developing countries are increasingly resentful of the burdens of adjustment placed on them that they argue are not matched by commensurate commitments from developed countries.

Challenges to Globalization evaluates the arguments of pro-globalists and anti-globalists regarding issues such as globalization’s relationship to democracy, its impact on the environment and on labor markets including the brain drain, sweat shop labor, wage levels, and changes in production processes, and the associated expansion of trade and its effects on prices. Baldwin, Winters, and the contributors to this volume look at multinational firms, foreign investment, and mergers and acquisitions and present surprising findings that often run counter to the claim that multinational firms primarily seek countries with low wage labor. The book closes with papers on financial opening and on the relationship between international economic policies and national economic growth rates.

560 pages | 42 line drawings, 80 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2004

National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report

Economics and Business: Economics--International and Comparative

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Challenges to Globalizaton: An Overview
I. THE CRITICS
1. Assessing Globalization’s Critics: "Talkers Are No Good Doers?"
2. Globalization and Democracy
II. TRADE FLOWS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
3. Geography and Export Performance: External Market Access and Internal Supply Capacity
4. Globalizatioin and Interaction Commodity Trade with Specific Reference to the West
African Cocoa Producers
5. Globalization and Dirty Industries: Do Pollution Havens Matter?
III. FACTOR MARKETS: LABOR
6. The Role of Globalization in the Within-Industry Shift Away from Unskilled Workers in
France
7. The Brain Drain: Curse or Boon? A Survey of the Literature
8. The Effects of Multinational Production on Wages and Working Conditions in Developing
Countries
IV. FACTOR MARKETS: CAPITAL
9. Home- and Host-Country Effects of Foreign Direct Investment
10. Competition of Multinational Investment in Developing Countries: Human Capital,
Infrastructure, and Market Size
11. The Cross- Border Mergers and Acquisitions Wave of the Late 1990s
V. MACROECONOMICS
12. Financial Opening: Evidence and Policy Options
13. Openness and Growth: What’s the Empirical Relationship?

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press