Scott C. Bradford and Robert Z. Lawrence use the underlying data from purchasing power parity surveys to estimate the potential benefits from fully integrating goods markets among major OECD countries. These data are particularly useful because they are comprehensive, and every effort has been made to ensure that they are comparable. Input-output tables are used to eliminate distribution margins from final goods prices and thereby provide estimates of ex-factory prices. Price differentials have been taken as measures of barriers, and the welfare effects of eliminating these barriers have been estimated in a general equilibrium model. The study also provides insights into the relative openness of individual OECD countries to the world economy and the degree to which Europe has become a single market.

Annotation How important are the remaining barriers to integration in international goods markets and how would eliminating them affect global and individual countries' welfare? This book studies these questions using the most comprehensive price data available. Bradford and Lawrence find that there is considerable market fragmentation among industrial countries -- that is, firms charging different prices for similar products in different national markets -- even among countries with low tariff barriers. The authors estimate that integration among the eight countries in their sample -- Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States -- would raise global GDP by more than $500 billion, or about 2 percent. Remarkably, almost half the global gain in these eight countries could be reaped if Japan alone eliminated its international fragmentation.

Globalization is exposing social fissures between those with the education, skills, and mobility to flourish in an unfettered world market—the apparent "winners"—and those without. These apparent "losers" are increasingly anxious about their standards of living and their precarious place in an integrated world economy. The result is severe tension between the market and broad sectors of society, with governments caught in the middle. Compounding the very real problems that need to be addressed by all involved, the knee-jerk rhetoric of both sides threatens to crowd out rational debate. From the United States to Europe to Asia, positions are hardening. Dani Rodrik brings a clear and reasoned voice to these questions. Has Globalization Gone Too Far? takes an unblinking and objective look at the benefits—and risks—of international economic integration, and criticizes mainstream economists for downplaying its dangers. It also makes a unique and persuasive case that the "winners" have as much at stake from the possible consequences of social instability as the "losers." As Rodrik points out, ". . . social disintegration is not a spectator sport—those on the sidelines also get splashed with mud from the field. Ultimately, the deepening of social fissures can harm all." President Clinton read the book and it provided the conceptual basis for the trade/IMF portions of his State of the Union message in January 1998.

For a century, economists have driven forward the cause of globalization in financial institutions, labour markets, and trade. Yet there have been consistent warning signs that a global economy and free trade might not always be advantageous. Where are the pressure points? What could be done about them?Dani Rodrik examines the back-story from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it is a concept that rests on shaky pillars, he contends. Its long-term sustainability is not a given.The heart of Rodrik>'s argument is a fundamental 'trilemma': that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support from those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.

Here James Mittelman explains the systemic dynamics and myriad consequences of globalization, focusing on the interplay between globalizing market forces, in some instances guided by the state, and the needs of society. Mittelman finds that globalization is hardly a unified phenomenon but rather a syndrome of processes and activities: a set of ideas and a policy framework. More specifically, globalization is propelled by a changing division of labor and power, manifested in a new regionalism, and challenged by fledgling resistance movements. The author argues that a more complete understanding of globalization requires an appreciation of its cultural dimensions. From this perspective, he considers the voices of those affected by this trend, including those who resist it and particularly those who are hurt by it. The Globalization Syndrome is among the first books to present a holistic and multilevel analysis of globalization, connecting the economic to the political and cultural, joining agents and multiple structures, and interrelating different local, regional, and global arenas. Mittelman's findings are drawn mainly from the non-Western worlds. He provides a cross-regional analysis of Eastern Asia, an epicenter of globalization, and Southern Africa, a key node in the most marginalized continent. The evidence shows that while offering many benefits to some, globalization has become an uneasy correlation of deep tensions, giving rise to a range of alternative scenarios.

With high growth rates in Asia, most notably in China, India, and Southeast and Central Asia, Eurasia's economic center of gravity is rapidly shifting to the East. At the same time, most of Europe faces serious barriers to growth in the long term. The volume examines the causes and consequences of this major shift in economic power and considers the options available to policymakers in various parts of Europe and Asia. The ten chapters in this book focus on long-term challenges of globalization rather than short-term problems of individual countries and explore two themes: global macroeconomic imbalances and growth. This work is based on a CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research and CASE-Ukraine conference.