Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Editors' acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- I The IMF, the World Bank, and neo-liberalism
- II Foreign direct investment, globalization, and neo-liberalism
- III Globalization of finance
- IV Trade, wages and the environment: North and South
- V Migration of people in a global economy
- VI Globalization and macroeconomic policy
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Editors' acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- I The IMF, the World Bank, and neo-liberalism
- II Foreign direct investment, globalization, and neo-liberalism
- III Globalization of finance
- IV Trade, wages and the environment: North and South
- V Migration of people in a global economy
- VI Globalization and macroeconomic policy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The evolution of capitalist economies has always been intimately bound up with nation-states and national economic policies. Economists have correspondingly placed the nation-state and national policy questions at the center of their analyses. Adam Smith, for one, could not have been more clear that his primary concern was to understand the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, not merely the wealth of individuals, households, or regions. In large measure, Smith's famous book was criticizing the position of the mercantilists on the causes of national wealth and, in particular, their view that export-promoting economic policies could make a nation wealthier by making its trading partners poorer.
In his model of comparative advantage, David Ricardo was also focused on the economic interactions between nations, demonstrating in the model – contrary to the mercantilists – how all countries, not merely those most aggressive at exporting, would benefit from foreign trade. But for Ricardo, this did not mean that the economic significance of national boundaries would diminish over time. In fact, what is not well known about Rieardo's famous exposition of trade between Portugal and England, with Portugal the more productive economy, is his conclusion that the benefits of foreign trade rested entirely on an assumption of capital immobility between nations.
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- Globalization and Progressive Economic Policy , pp. 1 - 34Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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