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This paper uses a transformation of the period-by-period index proposed by Cerqueira and Martins (), to overcome some of its shortcomings, in a non-parametric estimation to analyze how business cycle synchronization for a sample of 111 countries evolved in the period 1960-2007. The period-by-period index is able to distinguish between negative correlations due to episodes in single years, asynchronous behavior in turbulent times and synchronous behavior over stable periods and the non-parametric approach provides a more detailed analysis than the use of a parametric approach. The results show that since the nineties the synchronization at the world level, within and between country groups, experienced a dramatic increase reaching the highest values ever at the sample end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews economic principles for optimality of the taxation of international profit, from both a global and national perspective. It argues that for traditional systems based on the residence of the investor or the source of the income, nothing less than full harmonization across countries can achieve global optimality. The conditions for national optimality are more difficult to identify, but are most likely to imply source-based taxation. However, source-based taxation requires an allocation of the profits of multinational companies to individual jurisdictions; this is not only very difficult in practice, but in some cases is without any conceptual foundation. The taxation of interest income on a residence basis is also hard to justify if the aim of the tax system is to tax only the income arising from economic activity in a given country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the growing importance of the health care sector and the significant development of trade in health services, foreign direct investment (FDI) in this sector has gathered momentum with the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Despite extensive case based research and publications in recent years on health care markets and the rise of private sectors, it is surprisingly difficult to find evidence on the relative importance of the largest multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in the health care sector. The objective of the paper is to identify some of the determinants of foreign investment of the largest MNCs operating in this industry. The list of the largest MNCs has been compiled using company websites and data is available for 41 developing economies for which at least two MNCs have an office (branch and/or affiliate). The results of this study have some important implications. They indicate that location-specific advantages of host countries, including good governance, do provide an explication of the internationalization of firms in some developing countries rather than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on economic, political & cultural changes in respect to globalization. It proposes a conceptual model to discuss the effect of mutual relationships among these concepts in the view point of futures studies. Discussing the literature of globalization and its effect on fundamental concepts of human's life, i.e. culture, politics and economy leads to a better understanding of basic features of these concepts. The connections among these concepts in front of a time line with globalization growth can be put together to make a new conceptual model in order to explain their relationships in future. Proposed model shows that the growth of globalization will dismantle economic, political & cultural differentiation issues, as globalization will reduce their complexity and discrepancy. In other words, future world is not affected significantly by economic, political and cultural infrastructures since the distinctions among these concepts will be reduced by an overall convergence resulted from Globalization positive trend. To understand the best future we should stand on a tiny point to see the reality. This goal is just reached through right vision to understand the best plausible scenarios. This paper aims to propose a model in order to show the basic impact of culture, politics and economics on world which are the basic pillars events of today, but not for tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate some of the issues raised by a number of analysts who either consider globalization as beneficial (opening numerous cultural possibilities, multiple identities and choices) or as a threat (the loss of individual thought and local culture caused by the growing bias in favor of the visible and vociferous elements of civil society). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a pervasive trend towards state retrenchment in Latin America since the 1980s, there remains significant variation in the levels of privatization across the region. However, very few cross-national studies of the determinants of privatization have been conducted and we still do not truly know why states privatize. This paper examines the determinants of privatization for 14 Latin American states over the period 1975 to 2003. I contend that privatization is best conceptualized as a two-stage process involving an initial decision to privatize, followed by a subsequent decision concerning the extent and intensity of privatization. In addition, privatization cannot be simply explained by either international or domestic level-variables. Rather, endogenous and exogenous variables will have different impacts at different stages of this process. The results of the statistical tests yield two important insights. Firstly, the initial decision to privatize is primarily shaped by international factors, in particular, international diffusion, while variation in the level of state divestiture across the region can primarily be explained by domestic economic and political conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although not yet clearly defined as a concept, globalization was perceived over the past few decades as an evidence of the fact that the world finds itself in an accelerated process of transformation under the impact of political, economic and technological forces. The power, functions and authority of the states needed to be redesigned as we have to reckon now with juxtaposed loci of political authority - national, regional, international - in comparison with the period when the states created the Westphalian order for the system of international relations. This new order that established itself smoothly came increasingly under attack from different directions. The present paper tries to examine to what extent the present world economic crisis will be able to contribute to addressing at least some of the misgivings of this globalized world and its structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on the social impact of globalization. It focuses on the mediating role of the sectoral pattern of transnational production relocation to the postcommunist economies of Eastern Europe. We argue that the collapse of the socialist heavy industries and the eastward relocation of traditional light industries initially forced the social conditions of the East European countries to converge at the bottom and deepened the gap between the West and the East. Later, the eastward migration of high-skilled labor and capital-intensive industries and jobs led to decreasing social disparity between the West and some of the former socialist countries. However, convergence appears uncertain, costly, and uneven, and coincides with increasing social disparity within the group of East European new members and candidates of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely accepted that the rising gap in recent years between the global rich and the global poor can be linked to globalization in one way or another, although the strength and causality of the link is debated. Against the backcloth of the havoc wreaked by neo-liberalism and the Washington Consensus, new meta-narratives of global order are emerging to suggest ways of reducing global poverty and inequality. This paper examines two ‘Olympian’ visions of re-regulation along social democratic lines that propose new scalar arrangements. It evaluates these meta-narratives against another spatial ontology of regulation thrown up by the economy of global flows and networks – an unfolding regime of heterarchical order that is topological, hybrid, decentred and coalitional in its workings. The paper argues that these new ‘micro-worlds’ of regulation are as significant as, and equivalent to, so-called macro-orders of regulation in influencing global poverty and inequality, that they throw into doubt assumptions of control and reach held by the meta-narratives, and that their rise amounts to a situation of global regulatory excess, rather than, as some have argued, a condition of regulatory deficit or global disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is perhaps understandable that until the fall of the Soviet Union, the study of Marxism within the discipline of international relations was restricted largely to discussion of the state ideology Marxism-Leninism. The events of 1989, and the spectacular rise of the sub-discipline of international political economy in the context of globalisation, have, somewhat paradoxically, led to a resurgence of interest in critical, open forms of Marxism. Attempts to break away from the dogmatism of Marxism-Leninism whilst avoiding the complementary error of humanistic subjectivism have, of course, a long tradition in marxist thought.[1] Consistent with the 'open', critical tradition is the work produced by, amongst others, Luxemburg, Korsch, Bloch, Rubin, Pashukanis, Rosdolsky, the Italian tradition of 'autonomist' Marxism and the work of contributors to debates on value and the state held in the early years of the Conference of Socialist Economists.[2] This paper briefly outlines the contribution the 'CSE tradition' offers to the study of international relations and the fashionable analysis of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Recent events in the global economy have caused many writers to argue that the market is driven by animal spirits, by irrational exuberance or speculation. At the same time, the economic downturn has apparently caused many voters in the United States, and other countries, to change their opinion about the the proper role of government. Unfortunately, there does not exist a general equilibrium model of the political economy, combining a formal model of the existence, and convergence to a price equilibrium, as well as an equilibrium model of political choice. One impediment to such a theory is the so-called chaos theorem which suggests that existence of a political equilibrium is non-generic. This paper surveys results in the theory of dynamical systems, emphasizing the role of structural stability and chaos. We consider models of celestial mechanics where the notion of chaos first developed, and then examine applications in models of climate change and economics. There is discussion of the past influences of climate on human society, and particularly how agriculture developed during the "holocene," the past ten thousand years of benign climate. The recent period of globalization is likened to the holocene, and the question is raised whether future climate change may bring economic and political chaos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the accelerated processes of transformation set into motion under the impact of political, economic and technological forces unleashed by the globalization the traditional ways and means for problem solving had to be reshaped as we have to reckon now with juxtaposed loci of political authority - national, regional, international - and an everincreasing network of actors involved in a process generally referred to as global governance. With the worst of the most recent world economic crisis considered to already lay behind, the present paper tries to examine to what extent the turmoil has been able to contribute to addressing at least some of the misgivings brought about by the global governance. Due to the limits [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that global growth in imported varieties has significant implications for how globalization has been raising world welfare. The seminal work of Paul R. Krugman brought the study of varieties into focus by presenting a simple general-equilibrium model in which countries gain from trade through the import of new varieties. Classical international-trade theory postulates that the elimination of trade barriers improves welfare by reducing the wedge between domestic and import prices. A different reason for the gains from trade arises from models of monopolistic competition. If consumers value variety and countries cannot produce all varieties due to a fixed cost in the production of each variety, countries stand to gain from trade because it expands the set of available varieties. In another work, the impact of increased variety in the U.S. over the period from 1972 to 2001 was estimated. Using import data available, the researchers document that the number of varieties imported by the U.S., defined as the number of import categories multiplied by the average number of source countries for each category, has increased. Moreover, even at higher levels of aggregation, there has been a global pattern of variety growth. On average, large importing countries source imports from 50 percent more countries than they did 25 years ago.

This article examines the way in which the discourses of security and development have merged in the past decade as an important strand of global governance. It shows why this merging of discourses has occurred and assesses whether the newly embedded security-development discourse provides adequate conceptual tools for understanding the causes of global poverty. It concludes by setting out three paths that emerge from this security-development discourse and suggests that the ontological and epistemological claims at the heart of this understanding of International Relations and global poverty serve to reinforce global hierarchies of social power and privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the main elements of rupture and continuity in the global political economy since the global economic crisis of 2008-2009. While the current calamity poses a more systemic challenge to neoliberal globalization than genetically similar turbulences in the semi-periphery during the 1990s, we find that evidence for its transformative significance remains mixed. Efforts to reform the distressed capitalist models in the North encounter severe resistance, and the broadened multilateralism of the Group of 20 is yet to provide effective global economic governance. Overall, neoliberal globalization looks set to survive, but in a more het- erodox and multipolar fashion. Without tighter coordination between old and emerging powers, this new synthesis is unlikely to inspire lasting solu- tions to pressing global problems such as an unsustainable international fi- nancial architecture and the pending environmental catastrophe and may even fail to preserve some modest democratic and developmental gains of the recent past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of globalisation and depoliticisation of the political economy on post-communist Eastern Central Europe (ECE) with an emphasis on Poland. Three waves of post-communist neoliberalisation are discussed. The first wave was an extension of the Washington Consensus which emphasized privitsastion and internationalisation. The second wave was the enlargement of the European Union (EU) and economic competitiveness. The third wave since 2004 is a push towards a global agenda and neoliberal competitiveness and capitalism. It is suggested that the economic, institutional, and social process related to neoliberalisation should be re-politicized.

This review discusses two recent approaches to language and globalisation from the theoretical field of discourse analysis. FAIRCLOUGH's monograph Language and Globalization discusses a wide range of discourses of globalisation and aims to combine cultural political economy and critical discourse analysis. BLOMMAERT's book is an introduction to the study of discourse, combining an ethnographic approach influenced by American anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics. Globalisation is integrated into his approach at all levels of analysis as shaping the conditions of language practices in society today. The books offer analyses from different thematic angles and geo-cultural perspectives: while FAIRCLOUGH focuses on the representational quality of language underlying his textual analysis of discourses of globalisation, BLOMMAERT dedicates his analysis to the shaping of linguistic repertoires and the unequal currency of language practices in a globalised world. Both offer interdisciplinary potential for readers from other disciplines of social research who are interested in language-related aspects of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a letter from the guest editors of the journal, who include Neil Abramson, Iris Berdow, Allan Bird, Mason Carpenter, and Irene Chew. The guest editors discuss the topic of this issue of the journal, which is a new direction for global teams research. The article discusses the complexity of global teams and presents an overview of social capital and social networks. Articles contributed to the issue are also discussed, which include "The Importance of Language in Global Teams: A Linguistic Perspective," "Building Bridges, Windows and Cultures: Mediating Mechanisms between Team Heterogeneity and Performance in Global Teams," and "International Experience Heterogeneity Effects on Top Management Team Advice Networks: A Hierarchical Analysis.

The concept of vulnerability was introduced into IR theorising by Keohane and Nye who saw it as one of the consequences of complex interdependence and it is being increasingly employed by IGOs to capture the impact of globalisation on society. However, the concept has been little used in the academic literature on globalisation, except in a descriptive sense. This article argues that the concept has the potential to fill a gap in the toolkit of the ‘new’ IPE, offering an analytical category that can capture the distinctive impact of globalisation on society more adequately than other concepts that are more widely used. The article begins by surveying how the concept has been used by Keohane and Nye and by IGOs. It then offers a definition and illustrates the application of the concept by describing some of the principal ways in which globalisation is increasing risk and eroding coping mechanisms. It goes on to argue that the concept of vulnerability captures in a fuller way the distinctive social impact of globalisation than do other concepts widely used in the IPE literature, examining in turn the limitations of the concepts of poverty/inequality, risk and insecurity. Finally, the article situates the concept of vulnerability within the social theory of Karl Polanyi, arguing that it expresses in the conditions of today's globalisation the threats to human livelihood from the inroads of the market that are widely referred to by scholars within the ‘new’ IPE, capturing better than do other concepts the key features of these threats as seen by Polanyi. The article concludes by proposing the concept of vulnerability as a core conceptual category for IPE scholars that offers the potential for the disciplinary field to generate more original insights into the social impacts of the political economy processes to the understanding of which it has made such a major contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soccer (football in the non-American terminology) is the most globalized sport. Free circulation of players has markedly increased during the last ten to fifteen years as limits on the number of foreign players in the European leagues have been lifted, and clubs have become more commercially minded. On the other hand, the rules governing national team competition have remained restrictive: players can play only for the country where they were born. We show that, in a model where there is free circulation of labour, increasing returns to scale, and endogeneity of skills, this produces on the one hand, higher overall quality of the game and increasing inequality of results among clubs, and on the other hand, lower inequality in the national teams' performances. The empirical examples from the history of the European Champions' League and the World Cup support the implications of the model. We argue in the conclusions, that soccer's global rules allow poor countries to capture some of their ‘leg drain’, that is the improved skills which their players have acquired playing for better foreign clubs. This provides an example as how forces of efficiency but also inequality unleashed by globalization can be harnessed by the existence of global institutions to help improve the outcome for the poor countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis on neoliberal globalization and capital accumulation which is based on an empirical analysis and a new framework of accumulation theory. It builds its argument based on a power understanding of capital that emphasizes differential accumulation by dominant capital groups. It presents the two distinct regimes of differential accumulation which are the breadth and depth regimes. The breadth regime relies on proletarianization, on green-field investment and on mergers and acquisitions. The depth regime builds on redistribution through stagflation or accumulation through crisis.

This article argues that studies of counter-hegemony and resistance in International Political Economy (IPE) have often ignored the cultural dimensions of anti-globalisation. We argue that a greater understanding of the elements needed for the articulation of counter-hegemony within IPE can be achieved through an engagement with the traditions inherent in the Birmingham School, and with the elements of Situationism contained within the anti-consumerist movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dr. Kamrava is professor and chair of the Political Science Department at California State University, Northridge. His latest book isThe Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War(University of California Press, forthcoming 2005). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is globalisation 50, 500 or 5,000 years old? Most economists take the ‘big bang’ view, and think globalisation happened very recently. Most historians also take the big bang view, but point to globalisation in the distant past, citing famous dates like 1492. We argued recently in this (O'Rourke and Williamson 2002a) and another journal (O'Rourke and Williamson 2002b) that both views are wrong. Instead, we argued that globalisation has evolved since Columbus, but that the most dramatic change by far took place in the nineteenth century. Economically significant globalisation did not start with 1405 and the first junk armadas heading west from China, or with 1492 and Columbus sailing those little caravels west from Europe, or with 1571 and the arrival in Manila of those stately galleons from Mexico. Globalisation became economically meaningful only with the dawn of the nineteenth century, and it came on in a rush. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent issue of the European Review of Economic History (vol. 6, 2002, pp. 23–50), Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson dismiss claims by ‘World historians…[who] argue that globalisation is a phenomenon which stretches back several centuries, or even several millennia’ (p. 23). Rather, O'Rourke and Williamson insist that ‘[g]lobalisation did not begin 5,000 years ago, or even 500 years ago. It began in the early nineteenth century. In that sense, it is a very modern phenomenon’ (p. 47). O'Rourke and Williamson offer an explicit model of world trade that predicts specific outcomes; and they marshal empirical evidence to support their contention that there was no global economy until the early decades of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legacy of the last 50 years of development economics is not very inspiring. In the 1960s and 1970s, instead of looking at the real causes and viable solutions to poverty and underdevelopment, development economics was preoccupied with the politically-charged debate over the superiority of either state-controlled or market systems. In the 1980s and 1990s, economists expected that globalization would come to be a panacea for all developing countries. They advocated the abandonment of traditional industries and occupations and their replacement by modern sectors modelled after or imported from the developed countries. Such policies have generally failed with few exceptions-those being countries which chose to implement their own specific policies of development These countries skillfully combined government interventionist with market system incentives. Despite its past problems, development economics has recently evolved to better reflect the realities of developing countries. For the first time, development economics is on the verge of becoming a real social science in which analysis of traditional institutions, community life, and religious and ethnic factors is not only important but decisive in developing new social and economic growth objectives and economic policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the relationship between how globalization is defined and what globalization theorists propose as appropriate responses to its effects. Distinction between the two uses of the term globalization; Definitions of globalization articulated by globalization theorists across the disciplines of sociology, law, political science, social theory and economics; Analysis of whether a relationship exists between the activities of globalization description and prescription; Need for a critical methodology of globalization that accounts for the relationship.

This article examines the conditions under which conquest is likely to reap significant economic rewards. Scholars have largely focused on how the level of popular resistance within the vanquished country influences the benefits of conquest. What needs to be scrutinized in greater depth is how post-World War II economic transformations within the most advanced countries affect the benefits of conquest. This article focuses on examining one particular economic change that has been neglected for the most part in the security and peace literature: the globalization of production. The article delineates four recent changes in the structure of global production and outlines how each of these economic transformations alters the benefits of conquest. The collective impact of the arguments strongly indicates that the benefits of conquest have declined significantly in recent years within the most economically advanced countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about the book "The International Organization of Credit: States and Global Finance in the World Economy," by Randall D. Germain. Taking a world-economy approach to international political economy, the book presents an argument about how to account for the international monetary order, with a special focus on the international organization of credit. The book provides historical interpretation of the international organization of credit based on an examination of the successive international organizations of credit centered in Antwerp, Belgium, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and London, England, from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries and an analysis of the economist Bretton Woods period, concentrating on the foundation of international credit that allowed a stable monetary order to be achieved during this period. The book examines changes in the contemporary period, from 1972 to the early l990s. It also highlights the process of decentralized globalization, which took effective hold of the international organization of credit in the early l980's, and the response of public authorities to these changes.

The basic idea is that political support for expanded trade and increased integration in the post-war period has been predicated largely on the idea that expanded trade will be complemented by the existence of social safety nets at home. That is how interpret the history of the world economy after 1945. And, indeed, when the author looks at the evidence, he finds that it is precisely those countries that are most open to trade, and where trade has increased the most, that have developed the most extensive social safety nets, the most extensive welfare state arrangements. So, the author's interpretation of the evidence is that domestically provided social insurance has been the flip side of open trade. Looked at from this perspective, some of the consequences of globalization are raising severe dilemmas. As the corporations and capital become internationally more mobile, the tax base of nation-states tends to erode and, therefore, the ability of governments to finance social safety nets is to some extent compromised as well.