Summary

This authoritative Handbook provides a thorough account and analysis of the important issues relating to the globalization of the international economy. The increasing interdependence of the world's economies has caused a breakdown in national economic boundaries and a freer access to goods, services and labour. This comprehensive book, written by experts in the field, addresses major issues associated with this international economic integration.

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Choice Review

This 26-chapter book, clustered around five major themes and, accordingly, organized into five major parts, covers a wide range of global economic issues such as foreign direct investment and the role of multinational corporations; internationalization and integration of industrial, financial, labor, and agricultural markets; international trade and the role of multilateral institutions; global financial markets and external debt; regional trading blocs; the transition to market economies of the former Soviet-type economies; and global environmental and resource issues. Despite this wide coverage, the analyses and insights into the issues covered are not very deep. With the exception of few chapters (namely, those by Rodgers, Chichilnisky, Webber, and Hodgkinson), the volume is wanting in both originality and relevance: most of the pieces consist of either simple reformulations and restatements of the old, or of esoteric technical models without much relevance to real developments. And while the issues covered are diverse, theoretical insights and policy recommendations are not; with few exceptions, they uniformly represent the neoliberal version of the neoclassical perspective. Both the history and the competing theories of globalization are either absent or only minimally present. For a more balanced account of globalization see, e.g., Satya Dev Gupta's The Political Economy of Globalization (1997). E. Hosseinzadeh; Drake University