In The News

Perceptions and Realities of Globalization

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard May 30, 2008
Globalization is a non-stop economic process. Individuals, companies or governments are always on the lookout for new processes or innovations – and so the economic and power structure of the world is never stagnant. The West made a mistake in assuming that the flow of technology and know-how moves only one way, from developed to developing nations. As a result, voters in the West are puzzled and...

Ethiopia Puts Logo on Its Hottest Export

Aaron O. Patrick May 21, 2008
Legend has it that centuries ago a young Ethiopian shepherd first discovered the taste and energy-boosting powers associated with the coffee plant. Globalization was not a word then, but the drink made from the plant’s beans quickly gained popularity the world over. The government of Ethiopia – setting out to highlight the special quality of its coffee and pursue licensing agreements with...

Spirit of the Wombles

Libby Brooks May 20, 2008
The anti-globalization movement captured world attention in the 1990s. But media coverage quickly shifted to terrorist attacks, wars, climate change and other problems, writes Libby Brooks for the Guardian. “Even if 9/11 hadn't happened, it's doubtful whether the anti-globalisation movement could have been sustained,” writes Brooks. “Its membership was too disparate, its aims too vague...

Vietnam Is the New China: Globalization's Victors Hunt for the Next Low-Wage Country

Alexander Jung May 16, 2008
Labor has become a scarce commodity in China, and so companies needing workers and seeking high profit margins look to other nations, including Vietnam, Bangladesh or India. A symbiotic system once supplied jobs and eliminated poverty for the Chinese and provided the West with cheap products, report Alexander Jung and Weiland Wagner. But with more stringent labor laws, an economic boom, a...

A Strategy to Promote Healthy Globalization

Lawrence Summers May 14, 2008
US workers and voters are impatient with globalization – and the highly skilled, productive workers in the West do not want any competition to dent their top wages. “[Workers’] effort is complemented by capital, broadly defined to include equipment, managerial expertise, corporate culture, infrastructure and the capacity for innovation,” writes Lawrence Summers, Harvard professor and former...

Is Larry Summers the Canary in the Mine?

Devesh Kapur May 14, 2008
One-time champions of free trade, economic liberalization and globalization – like Larry Summers, former treasury secretary with the Clinton administration – now unveil their doubts. Globalization presents competition, and perhaps potential threat for the US is how a trio of analysts summarizes Summers’ argument in an opinion essay for the Financial Times. His “apparently nationalist argument is...

Superclass and the Inequity of Globalization

David Rothkopf May 14, 2008
The free-market principles that drive global trade of goods, services and ideas often run counter to notions of institutional regulation. According to David Rothkopf, author and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, this void in global governance has facilitated the rise of a “superclass” of elites, numbering about 6,000, whose actions impact millions of lives. The...