How has globalization through trade and foreign investment affected labour markets, wages, profits, and inequality? This fundamentally important question is addressed deeply in this volume, with methods ranging from microeconomic theory to econometric studies using detailed firm-level and household data. The primary objective of the volume, a compendium of important research performed by Ann Harrison and co-authors, is to study and understand whether and how workers, in both the United States and major developing and emerging countries, have fared in the recent era of massive globalization. There are plenty of anecdotes about such questions, but this volume develops testable hypotheses, collects essential data, and uses frontier techniques to provide the best and most systematic evidence available. Chapters range widely over standard and current trade theories, frontier thinking about the nature and effects of multinational enterprises and offshoring, and the critical roles of credit markets, international innovation and technology diffusion in driving employment, wage changes, and inequality. The volume also covers critical institutional matters, such as how globalization influences activism in securing labour rights. The analysis in the book is essential for understanding the complex and deep relationships among trade liberalization, foreign direct investment, technical change, and the fortunes of workers in increasingly globalized markets.

Globalization is a complex phenomenon involving the mobility of goods, capital, labour and ideas across country borders. From an economic point of view, two waves of globalization have been identified by scholars so far. The first wave materialized between the second half of the Nineteenth century and WWI; the second wave rose after WWII and gained momentum at the end of the Twentieth century before slowing down in the aftermath of the global financial crisis due to renewed protectionist pressures. This collection of essays studies the implications of this second wave of globalization for national economic performance. In doing so, it takes a bottom-up approach, building up the macroeconomic trajectories from the microeconomic effects of globalization on firms and workers. The collected essays highlight the asymmetry of responses across firms and workers between and within industries as well as territories, thus explaining the forces behind the emergence of 'winners' and 'losers' from globalization. The collection shows how state-of-the-art models of international economics and economic geography can be brought to life by addressing several topical issues in the public debate, ranging from regional growth and regional decline to international competition and creative destruction, from innovation patterns to cultural diversity and from immigration to offshoring.

Globalizationâ€"the flow of people, goods, services, capital, and technology across international bordersâ€"is significantly impacting the chemistry and chemical engineering professions. Chemical companies are seeking new ideas, a trained workforce, and new market opportunities regardless of geographic location. During an October 2003 workshop, leaders in chemistry and chemical engineering from industry, academia, government, and private funding organizations explored the implications of an increasingly global research environment for the chemistry and chemical engineering workforce. The workshop presentations described deficiencies in the current educational system and the need to create and sustain a globally aware workforce in the near future. The goal of the workshop was to inform the Chemical Sciences Roundtable, which provides a science-oriented, apolitical forum for leaders in the chemical sciences to discuss chemically related issues affecting government, industry, and universities.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

World trade has expanded significantly in recent years, making a major contribution to global growth. Economic growth has not led to a corresponding improvement in working conditions and living standards for many workers. In developing countries, job creation has largely taken place in the informal economy, where around 60 per cent of workers are employed. Most of the workers in the informal economy have almost no job security, low incomes and no social protection, with limited opportunities to benefit from globalization. This study focuses on the relationship between trade And The growth of the informal economy in developing countries. Based on existing academic literature, complemented with new empirical research by the ILO And The WTO, The study discusses how trade reform affects different aspects of the informal economy. it also examines how high rates of informal employment diminish the scope for developing countries to translate trade openness into sustainable long-term growth. The report analyses how well-designed trade and decent-work friendly policies can complement each other so as to promote sustainable development and growing prosperity in developing countries.

Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz focuses on policies that truly work and offers fresh, new thinking about the questions that shape the globalization debate.

The world was shocked in April 2013 when more than 1100 garment workers lost their lives in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka. It was the worst industrial tragedy in the two-hundred-year history of mass apparel manufacture. This so-called accident was, in fact, just waiting to happen, and not merely because of the corruption and exploitation of workers so common in the garment industry. In Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy, Richard P. Appelbaum and Nelson Lichtenstein argue that such tragic events, as well as the low wages, poor working conditions, and voicelessness endemic to the vast majority of workers who labor in the export industries of the global South arise from the very nature of world trade and production. Given their enormous power to squeeze prices and wages, northern brands and retailers today occupy the commanding heights of global capitalism. Retail-dominated supply chains—such as those with Walmart, Apple, and Nike at their heads—generate at least half of all world trade and include hundreds of millions of workers at thousands of contract manufacturers from Shenzhen and Shanghai to Sao Paulo and San Pedro Sula. This book offers an incisive analysis of this pernicious system along with essays that outline a set of practical guides to its radical reform.