Globalization and Trade

• Multinational Corporations - Global distribution of MNCs, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, intrafirm trade and cross-border interfirm agreements
• Update on Economic Analysis: Overview of the research program - Understanding the location of economic activity is important because it is at the scale of towns, cities and regions that Canadians participate in economic activity. That is, it is at these relatively small geographic scales that people live out their economic lives - find jobs, purchase goods and services, buy a home, etc.
  The Economic Geography research program has been established to use Statistics Canada data to better understand the spatial organization of Canada's economy. In other words, as Dicken and Lloyd note in Location in Space, economic geography is concerned with where various elements of Canada's economy are located, how they are connected together in space, and the impact of structural changes to the Canadian economy on the location of economic activity.
• PIIRS Project on Historical Globalization - Globalization is everywhere. States, economies, and societies are increasingly integrated; flows of goods, capital, humans, and cultural objects now link us in a global web. There is little doubt that we are undergoing a process of compression of international time and space. Globalization is also nowhere. Lacking a coherent empirical or theoretical underpinning, the concept is in danger of becoming an academic Òone-hit-wonderÓ with little to show for the attention[1]. What does globalization mean? Does it represent a revolutionary change in human history? What can we learn from similar historical phenomena and epochs?
  To address those questions, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) of Princeton University proposes a new way to study globalization and to place it in its appropriate context. The two quotes above suggest the dilemma facing analysts of contemporary global relations. While Braudel advises attention to the longue durŽe and the need to place modern developments in the appropriate historical context, Borges cautions against providing so much background, so much detail, as to create an undiluted portrait of precisely what we are trying to understand. The proposed project will allow for both analytical comprehension without oversimplification and comprehensive accounting without excessive specificity. We propose to foster a better understanding of contemporary reality and the historical process that accounts for it through a collaborative project that will: include cartographic and data-graphic representations of historical transregional flows, produce a succinct analysis of the development of these links over the past five thousand years. and promote further systemic study of historical globalization.
• Economic Tectonics: The Changing Map of Globalization - In Global Shift, Peter Dicken presents a geographer's view of the changing global economy. The lowering of trade and investment barriers between nations and the advances in transportation, communication, and information technologies have facilitated not only the explosion of world trade and the interpenetration of markets, but also the development of transnational production networks and the global division of labor organized through the aegis of transnational corporations (TNCs). These transformations have been extremely uneven geographically, leading to increasing prosperity in the "trilateral" world of East Asia, North America, and Western Europe, while leaving the Eurasian heartland, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America in poverty. At the same time that economic activities have dispersed around the globe and the world economy is becoming increasingly integrated, large areas of the world are only peripheral players in the market and are making very slow progress toward integration. Production networks have simultaneously become more geographically diverse yet concentrated. The dispersion process is fuelled by the search for low-skill, low-wage labor in labor-intensive production activities, while capital-intensive activities, especially those requiring a highly educated workforce, cluster in a few developed countries. Thus trade and investment flows have developed along specific routes between these geo-economic agglomerations, and many areas of the globe remain "off the beaten path."
  Dicken describes the geographic structure of the world economy prior to the Second World War as characterized primarily as the developed, industrialized core and the underdeveloped periphery. This core-periphery structure was bifurcated during the Cold War into the capitalist and communist worlds. Each had their own core-periphery relationships, but it was more common for less developed countries (LDCs) to have relationships with both the capitalist and communist cores than for the two cores to trade with each other. Newly industrialized countries (NIEs) began to emerge in the periphery in the latter stages of the Cold War, and a number of these have seen phenomenal growth since the end of the Cold War. The "tiger economies" of East Asia--South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore--are the most notable examples. These and other rising NIEs comprise an emerging semi-periphery, with some edging toward integration into the core itself. While the contours of the economic core have shifted to some extent during the 20th century, by and large the core remains where it was a century ago. Few if any countries that were core then could be considered peripheral now. However, the relative economic strength of the various core states, as well as trading relationships between them, has changed over time. Also, the definition of core economic activity changes with advancing technology, with high-tech information and communication research and development (R&D) and services representing higher value-added, tending to displace more traditional, lower-tech manufacturing activities to the semi-periphery.
  Dicken points out the diversity in the economic timescape as well as in the landscape, that economic development has been marked by fits and starts, booms and busts, at the global system level and also within specific regions or nations. Thus, despite the high level of economic integration, especially among developed countries, it is possible for some to be in recession while others are experiencing growth. In general, the global economy performed quite well, experiencing steady growth until the "Nixon shocks" and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s. Since then, overall performance has been much more volatile.
• NAFTA - Chapter 11 - Articles 1101 to 1120
• Trading Democracy
• Beyond Globalization: The Struggle to Redefine Wealth - Globalization is not simply increasing exploitation, inequality and injustice, but it is suppressing great and growing potentials for human development. Until the opposition to globalization puts equal emphasis on these positive potentials, it is doomed to failure. The alternative to globalism is not the old industrial Welfare State, but something completely newŠmore participatory, egalitarian, ecological, self-regulatory, and grounded in a radically different, more qualitative, notion of wealth.
• The Politics Of Globalization - Globalization is a new stage of capitalism in its development of a single world economic system. This process is driven by the revolution in knowledge intensive modes of production, and is manifested in both world speculative finance and the internationalization of production. Its political consequences can be seen in the policies of neo-liberalism, the construction of a global superstructure responsible for the market, and a redefinition of the role of the state.
• The Management Development Programme: Productivity and Competitiveness Strategies - Employment sector - With the rapid globalization of the economy, enterprises and nations are faced with changing competition environment. Enterprises are adopting strategies aimed at developing competitive advantages based on flexibility, technical capability and enhanced customer value in terms of product differentiation, quality, speed, service and costs. Nations on the other hand are competing in creating the conditions that will enable their enterprises to be competitive in the increasingly liberalized domestic and international markets. Productivity improvement is essential component of these competitiveness strategies.
• Global Economy: IMF, World Bank, WTO, Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability... - These sections provide ways for people to educate each other and mobilize around the general theme of Democratizing the Global Economy. By providing critical facts and analysis of how the global economy works and how we can act to change it, Global Exchange hopes to build the growing grassroots movement for ending corporate rule and furthering economic democratization.
• World Development Report 1999/2000 Full Report - The development landscape is being transformed, presenting policymakers with new challenges at the global and local levels. This report charts the way forward by analyzing the contours of the new landscape and distilling lessons from the past. It examines the unfolding dynamic at the supranational and subnational levels. And it proposes new rules and structures to serve as a foundation for development policy in the 21st century.
  Fifty years of development experience have yielded four critical lessons. First, macroeconomic stability is an essential prerequisite for achieving the growth needed for development. Second, growth does not trickle down; development must address human needs directly. Third, no one policy will trigger development; a comprehensive approach is needed. Fourth, institutions matter; sustained development should be rooted in processes that are socially inclusive and responsive to changing circumstances.
  These insights are central to how the World Bank envisions its work in the 21st century and to the way in which it proposes to tackle the principal development challenges ahead. In addition to reducing poverty, these challenges include issues of food security, water scarcity, aging populations, cultural loss, and environmental degradation.
• The World-Systems Electronic Conferencing Network - WSN is an electronic conferencing network and information source for scholars and researchers who are studying world-systems. The purpose of WSN is to facilitate the sharing of information about research, data, publications, announcements, meetings, syllabi, commentary, book reviews, scuttlebut and etc. WSN is part of CSF, Communications for a Sustainable Future, a collection of progressive electronic networks and archives at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
• Irish Industry, International Trade and European Integration - The Irish economy is one in which, as in Europe in general, industrial activity is unevenly distributed. Some sectors perform - and have developed - better than others. Some have concentrated spatially to a greater extent than others. Yet this uneven development has been the basis for Ireland's recent economic growth. The causes of this unbalanced industrial development include a complex interplay of historical, cultural and institutional factors in addition to traditional comparative advantage. All of these forces operate in the context of an increasingly integrated Europe.
  Ireland's economy can be characterised as one which is small and open. A large percentage of Ireland's economic activity takes place in the international sector, through exports and imports. In this paper we will examine different schools of trade theory and their respective explanations of differential industrial development between countries and regions. We will examine to what extent these theories can describe Irish experience to date. We will conclude by drawing out the implications for Irish trade and industrial policy in the future. In general what we show is that 'lumpiness' in the spatial concentration of industry is consistent both with the theories of international trade and the theories of industrial development.
• Combining Comparative Advantages: Multivariate Regressions VIsualisations and the Dynamics of International Trade - There is little doubt that multivariate regression analysis is among the most appropriate tools to test hypotheses if sufficiently reliable data is available. During the last decades statistical analysis has been refined and an ever growing set of statistical tests and sophisticated approaches enable the researcher to cope with all kinds of ambiguities in the analyzed data sets. Crucial for obtaining valid parameter estimates with regressions is the degree to which the common assumptions of regression analysis are met, especially that of the independence of the error terms and whether these have the same variance. While statistical analysis provides tests to check whether a given model meets these assumption or not, these tests are not very instructive on how to improve a given model in case the assumptions are hurt. To cope with these problems within the research process we suggest to extend the researcher's toolkit by a second technology. Tools for visualizing social structures can improve the specification of a given model if there is structure in the error terms. These visualizations allow not only to monitor the spatial organization of the resulting estimation errors but also guide the researcher how to improve the quality of the parameter estimates. In this article we will show how the visualization of the overall structure of world trade provides a very useful tool to enhance and analyze gravity models. The problem of international trade analyzed in this paper can be considered as fairly typical for the use of quantitative estimates. Crude estimates for trends in economic processes can be obtained by comparing parameter estimates cross-sectionally and between different points in time. The ratio of corresponding estimates provides an insight into the dynamics of international economic activities. Furthermore, since the internationalization of economic activities can easily be measured y an analysis of the bilateral trade flows between countries, the widely acknowledged standard problem of social research - the small-N problem, does not occur.On the other hand, the large number of observations makes an interpretation of error terms problematic. This is, where network visualization tools can help. The fruitfulness of the interplay of both technologies for that purpose is based on the fact that both extract different kinds of information gravity models are usually based on. While statistical tools treat flows as independent units, visualizations can make use of any relational information that describes the pairs of the observations as they are used for the regression analysis. Visualizations provide the researcher with a view of the overall system. Our purpose here is twofold. First, we link statistical analyses and visualization techniques and use both tools in parallel for a stepwise improvement of gravity models. And second, we apply the method to the analysis of international economic processes, showing that concepts aimed at the explanation of global economic processes grasp just aspects of global economic processes. We conclude, therefore, that economic integration is best studied by a non-eclectic mixture of seemingly competing theories.
• Canada-US Free Trade Comments - Even though I would classify the migration of the computer industry as primarily an historical accident, there has also been a broader, more general shift of the center of gravity of the U.S. economy to the south and west, away from the Chicago-Boston-Baltimore triangle which is so close to the major Canadian manufacturing regions. [For example, upstate New York population and labor force were lower in 1998 than in 1990] In other words, the center of Canada's population is now further away from the core of the North American economy than it was several decades ago. This may be a continuing negative factor for the Canadian economy.
• Resist WTO, APEC, economic globalisation - Large number of links to relevant sites.
• 'Free' markets nothing but a dangerously flawed ideal - ... every comparative advantage entails a comparative disadvantage. Indeed, in a world without trade barriers any comparative advantage creates a disadvantage somewhere else. Other people naturally resist the creation of that disadvantage and seek to correct it, both through trade barriers and the local industry they foster. They resist, for example, having tonnes of lamb dumped on their market just when they have started to make a living from sheep. Maybe American farmers aren't as good at growing lamb as we are, but it may also be the best use of some of their land and its best development for the future. It's their country, isn't it? (Editor's aside: This raises the issue of the appropriate size of the areal units engaging in trade, and does size change over time?)
• The Lexus and the Olive Tree - This book is an effort to explain how this new era of globalization became the dominant international system at the end of the twentieth century --replacing the Cold War system -- and to examine how it now shapes virtually everyone's domestic politics and international relations.
  For a contrary view, see the item below:
• The Anti-Thomas Friedman Page - This page is dedicated to demonstrating that Friedman's understanding of globalization is in fact extremely narrow, one-sided and misleading. His frequent and vociferous denunciations of those protesting against neoliberal globalization, and the arguments which Friedman advances in his book, are singularly ill-informed, poorly reasoned and, in many cases, demonstrably false.
• Reflections on Globalization and Its (Il)logic(s) - This chapter critically addresses globalization in four ways: (a) contesting the often unstated assumption that globalization comprises a coherent causal mechanism -- or set of causal mechanisms -- rather than a complex, chaotic, and overdetermined outcome of a multi-scalar, multi-temporal, and multi-centric series of processes operating in specific structural contexts; (b) questioning the intellectual and practical search for the primary scale -- whether global, triadic, national, regional, or urban -- around which the world economy is currently organized as if this would somehow be directly analogous to the primacy of the national scale in the thirty years of postwar growth in the circuits of Atlantic Fordism; (c) relating the resulting 'relativization of scale', i.e., the absence of a dominant nodal point in managing interscalar relations, to some basic contradictions and dilemmas of capitalism, the changing bases of accumulation, the changing relation between the economic and political, and the increased competitive importance of the social embeddedness of economic activities; and (d) noting how these problems are being addressed through economic and political projects oriented to different scales -- with little consensus as yet on how these projects and scales might be reconciled.
• The Internet for Small Businesses: an enabling infrastructure for competitiveness - In an increasingly global world, both information and information technology are of great significance to organizations of all sizes. Small business, however, suffer from the additional problem of limited resources - financial technological and human. For this group of organizations, information technology and the direct use of information itself can be of crucial use, provided that they can be made use of readily, cheaply and without recourse to expensive expert assistance. The Internet offers such a cost-effective and readily accessible approach to both information technology and the competitive use of information - and offers further benefit by opening up the global marketplace to companies which would normally not have the financial resources to reach potential trading partners or allies. This paper discusses the opportunities which the Internet makes available to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), building on both the still comparatively limited research available in this area and on the resources currently existing within the Internet itself to draw conclusions about just what a typical SME can hope to achieve from its use. The paper summarizes the range of activities which are available for SMEs and considers the additional benefits which may be obtained from "virtual alliances" with other small (or large) organizations. We discuss the need to align the organization's existing business strategy with its Internet usage strategy and look at the impetus which government initiatives in information infrastructure are providing for the SME group, summarizing the whole-of-government approaches being taken in Australia, Canada, the European Union and the U.S. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the most effective approaches which small businesses wishing to make use of the Internet might consider.
• Global And Regional Economics - Economic transformation in most of astern Europe and the former Soviet Union is moving forward despite mounting challenges. The most advanced states have moved beyond the most basic reforms to concentrate on a new, more detailed round of economic adjustments to become eligible for their ultimate goal -- membership in the European Union. Other states are still struggling with their first round of privatizations and rely heavily on international lending organizations to meet budget goals. The least advanced are stagnating under unreformed polticial systems.
• Globalisation and the information economy: challenges and opportunities for Africa - One of the key by-products of this period of rapid technological development and on-going information revolution is incessant change. Change is occurring in nearly every area of human existence and affecting the underlying structure of most types of organizations, including non-governmental and specialized organizations. Many organizations are wrestling with their particular direction in this period of Globalization.
  There are some key limitations to research in this area. The first is that its approach is broad in scope and highly interdisciplinary. It covers a lot of material and includes work in the disciplines of economics, history, sociology, political science, education and international relations. The second major limitation - one engendered by its broad interdisciplinary approach - is that it is addressed more to a general audience than a specific academic community.
  Despite these limitations, the findings in this paper should make a contribution to understanding of the opportunities and challenges for Africa in an era shaped by Globalization and the information economy.
• World Cities and Territorial States under Conditions of Contemporary Globalization - This is largely an empirical paper which uses a unique set of office geography data to describe inter-city relations across the world. After identifying a set of 55 world cities these patterns are related to states in a preliminary analyses of city-state connections. Particular emphasis is placed upon identifying trans-state processes and regional city hierarchies. This empirical reporting is sandwiched between a theoretical and practical introduction and conclusion. Using Braudel's conceptualization of capitalism as a world of monopolies, world city formation is introduced as a particular geographical knowledge nexus for creating new monopoly products. In the concluding section, the future of globalization is linked to the possibilities for world city network knowledge monopolies.
• The Biology Of Globalization - The Globalization of humanity is a natural, biological, evolutionary process. Yet we face an enormous crisis because the most central and important aspect of globalization -- its economy -- is currently being organized in a manner that so gravely violates the fundamental principles by which healthy living systems are organized that it threatens the demise of our whole civilization.
• Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 2001 - The full text of "Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 2001" is available here.
• Global Economic Crisis and the Need for an International Critical Geography - Since the 1970s, the relatively stable geography of postwar capitalism has been thrown in the air and has fallen about like so many pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. Most if not all of our assumptions about the geographical ordering of the world, from the local to the global scale, are now obsolete, and we find ourselves in a period where theory and political organization have to be reinvented together in order to match new circumstances. The most urgent task today, and one that broadly occupies most human geographers, is trying to put the pieces of the global jigsaw puzzle back together, both conceptually and in practice - trying to discern the geographical coherence (or lack thereof) of an emerging political and economic order.
• The 1998 Competitiveness White Paper (UK) - The Government's White Paper sets out the role it and business need to play in improving the UK's competitiveness. Our aim is to close the performance gap between the UK and other major trading nations. This is a job for business but Government must create the right environment for business success by providing an economic framework which is stable and enterprising. The Government will put in place policies and programmes to help businesses innovate and succeed as we all face the challenge of the knowledge driven economy.
• Globalization and the Rise of City-Regions - A world-wide mosaic of large city-regions seems to be over-riding (though is not effacing entirely) an earlier core-periphery system of spatial organization. The economic dynamics of these city-regions are analyzed with particular emphasis on the ways in which they tend to generate increasing-returns effects and competitive advantages for local producers. The managerial tasks that these city-regions face raise many new issues about local economic development policy and institution building in the interests of social order. These issues lead on to further questions about democracy and citizenship in the new global mosaic of city-regions as well as in the new world system as a whole.
• Human Ecology, Process Philosophy And The Global Ecological Crisis - Stephen Bunker in his study of the exploitation of the Amazon Basin offers one analysis, an analysis formulated from the perspective of human ecology. It is the outcome of a globalised economy characterized by huge concentrations of power. Analysing the flows of usable energy in the world economy, Bunker pointed out the difference between economies of the core zones of the world economy based on production of goods and those in the semi-periphery and periphery based on the extraction of resources to trade for such goods. Extractive economies, as they "develop", use up their reserves and are impoverished, while the productive economies of the core zones, as they develop, increase their power to dominate and exploit the extractive economies. The regulatory structures of semi-periphery regions, such as the Brazilian state bureaucracy, become vehicles through which core zones have been able to intensify exploitation of and extraction from the peripheries.
• The Second Coming: The Global Market and the Need for an International Political Authority - This is a theoretical inquiry into the nature of international political economy. The question it explores is simple: Will an international political authority be necessary for a global market economy to succeed? After examining the basic logical extensions of market-state relations on the national level, it becomes clear that the answer to this question must be yes. The route to this conclusion begins in Part I with an investigation of the nature of the marketplace. What are its advantages and what functions does it serve? Ultimately, the market requires basic services that it cannot provide on its own. A liberal democracy supplies these services within a framework of individual rights, but while it agrees with the market in promoting competition among free individuals, liberal democracies place a greater emphasis on equality. Part I concludes with a look at the implications of this conflict between the market and liberal democracy, which Arthur Okun calls the "Big Tradeoff" between equality and efficiency.
  Part II builds on the logic presented in the previous arguments. If it was necessary to embrace a mixed economy on the national level, will such a move have to be made internationally? This section investigates the measures and growth of the global economy, finding an extended level of economic interdependence. In addition to the rise of the global economy, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have been expanding. What roles do IGOs play on the international scene and in the absence of an international political authority, do they supply the rules necessary for a market economy to succeed? Since IGOs are generally incapable of acting outside of the wishes of their respective members and have no ability to challenge national sovereignty, they do not.
  Part III explains why an international political authority can be expected to be established in the context of a global economy. First, the global economy does not possess the basic rules and infrastructure a market must have if it is to avoid failure. Second, globalization is fast eroding the ability of individual nation-states to control externalities in their own spheres. Third, a global economy without a global government places Okun's tradeoff in a new context where the tradeoff disintegrates into a wholesale dismissal of notions of equality and equity. This is morally unacceptable.
  Part IV examines the implications of an international political authority and questions the logical implication that this authority would/should take the form of a liberal democracy. If liberal democracies allow markets to determine social ends, and if the social ends markets produce are morally unsound, then fundamental questions must be addressed considering our conceptions of liberty and rights.
• Net Loss: Government, Technology and the Political Economy of Community in the Age of the Internet - The new "information economy" seems to evoke a contradictory debate on regions and decentralization. On one hand, we have technologists like Nicholas Negropante seeing local regions disappearing as important entities in the face of the "spaceless" technology of information exchange. On the other hand, futurists like Alvin Toffler and his political disciples like Newt Gingrich have argued that the microchip is the midwife of regional rebirth and the deathknell for central political decision-making.
  How do we explain this contradiction?
  The Internet has emerged as the focus for much of the strongest hype and substance in debates on this new economy. It has become the defining economic event of the end of the 20th century - a fact reflected by the obsessive media attention and to the raw economic explosion of companies associated with it. The Internet is seen as the metaphor, even the embodiment, of the new information age, of a post-industrial economy, and of a new paradigm in workplace and company organization. Information in this view, rather than raw materials, has become the substance of commerce and the Internet is the highway of the new era. Most strikingly, the Internet is seen as the herald of the globalization of the economy and the triumph of a deregulated marketplace. In this vision, the economics of place has given way to telecommuting, global production and just-in-time delivery of goods and information from all points on the globe. In such a world, economic regions become an oxymoron as the economy becomes a matter of bits and e-mail in cyberspace, not transit and meetings in local space. The "Third Wave" in this scenario leaves economic regions as the archaic leftovers of the industrial age. Governments, those stalwart institutions tied to such geography, become impotent and unimportant in this new global information society.
• Extraterritorial Sanctions in an Interdependent World - It is almost a law of nature: strong states have used their economic dominance as instruments of foreign policy for as long as international trade has existed. Before ancient Rome destroyed the farmlands of Carthage by sowing them with salt, it first destroyed Carthage's economy by strangling its foreign trade; before Waterloo, Napoleon waged war on England by preventing its merchants from trading with Continental Europe; and before Pearl Harbor, the United States countered Japanese aggression in China with debilitating trade sanctions. The temptation to use economic sanctions as a weapon of foreign policy has always held the lure of a smart bomb : targeted, debilitating destruction, executable at minimal cost. It promises warfare, without the messiness of war.
  The real-life effectiveness of economic sanctions, however, like all smart weapons, may not be so great upon deeper examination. This is especially true for unilateral economic sanctions sanctions implemented by a single, usually powerful, nation. If not carefully implemented, unilateral sanctions exhibit the worst characteristics of a prisoner's dilemma, with the sanctioning nation being cast in the role of the duped prisoner who serves the maximum sentence at the hands of his deceptive partner in crime. Rather than punishing the offending foreign country, unilateral economic sanctions that are not honored by other nations tend to shift trade from the sanctioning country to competing economic powers, who are sometimes responsive to different domestic pressures, often indifferent to the reason for the sanctions, and always happy to benefit from the self-inflicted wound of an economic rival. Unilateral sanctions, in other words, work best when other nations support them at which time, by definition, they no longer are unilateral.
• DOJ/Antitrust: International Competition Policy Advisory Committee - This page has links to online chapters of the Report. The Report has relevance to globalization and its impact on US trade, antitrust, mergers and cartel legislation and on competition generally. (See following website as an example of its content.)
• Globalization and its Implications for Antitrust Cooperation and Enforcement - In the last several decades, more and more nations have come to recognize the value of competition as a tool for spurring innovation, economic growth, and the economic well-being of countries around the world. National industrial policies and other government interventions that constrain or order competition within markets have not wholly disappeared but are far less evident than they were even a decade ago. This new era is being defined by economic liberalization around the world and by dynamic technological change that not only is made possible by liberalization, but is itself an engine for liberalization. Both of these phenomena - economic liberalization and technological development - are in turn driving economic integration. This changing environment has many positive aspects. It promises more wealth for the world, including the less developed world, and more economic opportunity based on merit. But the changes can also be threatening and frightening.
• Networks of firms confronting the challenge of globalisation: The Italian experience - The post-Fordist revolution has brought about profound changes in traditionally Marshallian clusters of firms, particularly from the organisational point of view. In Italy these are now facing a range of adjustment and restructuring problems, whilst trying to respond to the challenges of market globalisation, but nevertheless are tenaciously maintaining a rapid pace of technological change...
  The ability to create a unique concentration of local skills, of local technology, of local infrastructure, of local suppliers in the relevant fields gives the ingredient for competitive success... The homogenising force of a shrinking world, with computer technology available to all, will make it essential for firms to be different from their rivals. Such differences, especially in economic vitality, appear to be established at home.
• IMF and Sweat Shops - So-called "free trade" pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) accelerate the global "race to the bottom," causing workers¹ wages to fall and sweatshops to multiply. Two of the most powerful proponents of this model are the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its sister institution, the World Bank. Efforts to reduce the power of these institutions would help working people in the United States and all over the world to raise their wages and standards of living.
• Enemies of the WTO - Bogus arguments against the World Trade Organization by Paul Krugman
• The Challenge of Comparing Continental Systems in a Globalizing World - This essay's major premise is that there are enough similarities and enough differences between the EU and the present generation of trade blocs to warrant considering the potential value of their systematic comparison. The essay's minor premise is that continentalism is a notion that can be of analytical utility in this undertaking.
• Globalization/Marginalization - In this paper, I briefly review some of the larger processes evident in and associated with the processes of globalization currently underway. I then take a broad tour of theoretical literatures that address the question of how marginalized areas are influenced by and experience economic development processes. I next make a quick sweep around the globe, discussing what I think the likely trends will be over the next year or so for different regions and their peripheral areas. I will end with a set of brief comments on policy issues presented in an era of globalization. These comments will emphasize the challenges facing peripheral regions of core countries, as this is where my experience is most concrete.
• Socio-spatial competition and polarization - In the present context of internationalization, the historical relation of competition between cities has acquired special importance. Every large European city tries to find the system to compete among the others in an increasingly competitive framework at two levels: in a world market of cities and in a European market of cities. It is possible to distinguish some different ways in the strategy of each city, related to their particular historical, political and territorial position; taking advantage of some relevant qualities or of its position.
• Globalization: Some Implications & Strategies For Women - Our world is getting meaner and as we reach the new millennium, ideas about collective ways of solving social problems have lost ground to arguments that the rules of competition are inevitable in the face of globalization. The apparent inevitability of a meaner world is reinforced by the remarkable ideological convergence of political and economic institutions around the world. Where diversity in economic and political institutions was once tolerated, uniformity is now demanded by international institutions.
• International Political Economy - Useful set of links pertaining to international economics and various global economic organizations.
• The Progress Project: Speaker Series - Archived webcasts of Jane Goodall, Doris Kearns-Goodwin, Robert Kuttner, Paul Hawken and Vandana Shiva, The Public Debate on Globalization and the WTO, Jimmy Carter, Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay, and Amory Lovins are available.
• No Globalization - Why do people believe in globalization? One answer is: nationalism. Nation states are still the dominant social structure on this planet (as the Kosovo crisis should remind people). Anti-nationalists know this. People who say "globalization" is eroding nations are not anti-nationalists. At worst, the opposite. The globalization hype can be a form of nationalist propaganda.
• World Bank Group | Small States: Meeting Challenges in the Global Economy - Joint World Bank / Commonwealth 2000 report on small states (defined as having a less than 1.5 million population). Focus is on the economy. Three out of four of these states are island states. Some are very wealthy (Brunei), some very poor (Guinea-Bissau). Many rely heavily on aid, foreign trade, and foreign investment. Full-text of the report available in PDF.
• WorldSkip.com - Basic information and links for all countries of the world. Includes links to basic maps, weather info, time and currency, news media, business and government links, tourism and culture.
• World 2000: An International Planning Dialogue to Help Shape the New Global System - This white paper hopes to go beyond the current discussion over a global economy, sustainable development, and other hot topics that are now widely discussed. Instead, it synthesizes current thought in order to discover fresh insights which can mobilize people and institutions to better guide their lives and the future of the planet. We first summarize nine supertrends which describe a long-term trajectory to an advanced stage of "global maturity." Then we note five principal issues which must be overcome to clear the way ahead. Finally, we argue that these issues are likely to be resolved by a newly emerging perspective which recognizes the essential unity of the emerging global community.
• The Postindustrial Economy - The far-reaching changes from a domestic to a global economy, the transformation of the new workplace, and the impact of these changes on how millions of Americans are experiencing virtually all aspects of their lives, their families, their communities and their experience of the culture is arguably the most important part of the post Cold War world. Far from dispersing, the postindustrial economy is concentrating and globalizing.
• George Soros - Toward a Global Open Society - Groups the deficiencies of the global capitalist system under five main headings: the uneven distribution of benefits, the instability of the financial system, the incipient threat of global monopolies and oligopolies, the ambiguous role of the state, and the question of values and social cohesion. The categories are somewhat arbitrary, and the various problem areas are interconnected.
• Global Economic Prospects 2000
• Trade and Investment Background Briefings - With the Seattle round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks starting on 30 November 1999, this set of Background Briefings has been produced to help explain some of key issues involved for developing countries.
• International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada
• Growing consensus on ills of globalization
• The Dynamic of Globalization
• Globalization: Towards a new perspective on political economy
• The Dark Side of Globalization
• Globalisation and Sovereignty
• Krugman's critique of globalization
• Documents Relating to the Process of Globalization
• Documents Relating to the Global Economy
• The Seamless World: A Spatial Model of International Specialization
• Trade Liberalization Reinforces The Need For Environmental Cooperation
• The Global Public Policy Project Home Page
• Global Economic Crisis and the Need for an International Critical Geography - Keynote speech originally delivered at the First meeting of the East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography (EARCAG), held in Kyongju, the Republic of Korea, 24-26 January, 1999.
• Global Trade Negotiations Home Page
• The Changing Social and Political Environment and Japanese Business
• Economic Globalization and its Implications for Canada
• The Rural Frontier as Safety Valve: The Industrialization of the Chinese Regions - The restructuring of the world economy presently underway is touching every national economy to some degree not the least the formerly centrally planned socialist economies. This phenomenon is changing international economic relations, the global political map, and the spatial organization of national economies. China, often cited as the envy of socialist countries, has been introducing fundamental reforms for 14 years. The reforms, which are described as the 'second revolution' by Deng Xiaoping, have accelerated China's economic growth. The question which many observers are asking however is why China and the Soviet Union have come to such different economic outcomes? Both countries introduced economic reforms during the 1980s, but their reform strategies were completely different. Deng attempted to carry out economic reforms without political reforms. By contrast, Mikhail Gorbachev decided that the only way to accomplish economic reforms was to introduce political reforms first. Shirk has reviewed the various interpretations that a variety of scholars have provided.
• Globalization: The Third Wave - Tracking the impact of the emerging global information economy on developing countries and on social movements
• Production System Life Cycle In A Global Enterprise Environment
• International Trade: An Overview
• Globalization & Corporate Rule
• Global Development And Environment Institute - The Global Development And Environment Institute (G-DAE)is a research institute at Tufts University dedicated to promoting a new understanding of how societies can pursue their economic goals in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner. Follow the links in this web site to learn more about the people, programs, and publications dedicated to that goal.
• Has Globalization Gone Too Far?
• The Global Economic Effects of the Japanese Crisis
• The Age of New Economics: Based on a Global Spatial Data Infrastructure
• Towards a Simulation of the World Economy
• Governance of Globalisation: ILO's Contribution
• Geography of the Global Economy
• BRAIN: Model For Planet Earth - In this section, we will look at world models‹attempts to predict, on the computer, ecological and economic changes affecting the population of the entire world. It should be stressed that there are many models of complex systems - such as weather prediction, for example - that are far better developed than world modeling. However, we develop world simulation in some detail because the studies have often captured headlines in newspapers and magazines. They have thus had an impact on the way many citizens view the world's social problems and the way they view the computer's role in society.
• Global Social And Economic Systems
• Citizens' Ratings of Quality of Life and Hope for the Future Across 29 Countries
• Robust Paths to Global Stability
• Thinking about Globalization: Myths and Facts
• The Club of Rome - Eleven Global Issues - Development - Meadows & al. (1)
• A New Wealth of Nations: Chapter 1
• Future Paths Programme: Transforming global relationships for the 21st century
• Japan As Threat: Geo-Economic Discourses On The U.S.-Japan Relationship In U.S. Civil Society, 1987-1991
• The Geographical Analysis of World Issues
• The Drug Trade
• Global Markets' Massive Extraterritorial Power
• Internet Competitive Advantage and the Global Economy
• What To Do About Globalization
• The Core-Periphery Model in International Trade
• G. Arrighi, "Capitalism and the Modern World-System: Rethinking the Non-Debates of the 1970s"
• Geography of the Global Economy
• Trade, Power And The Future
• International Futures - Global Modeling
• Global Modeling Research
• Global Models
• Multinational Corporations: Global Reach Or Global Breach
• Global Business Center
• Planet Business, Planetbiz, International, World, Global, Business, Trade, Commerce, Market, Directory
• Global Business Links
• Global Business Network Index
• Globalization and Internationalization in Publishing
• Preferential Trading Arrangements and Industrial Location

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