Globalization Impacts On The Poor And Inequality Essay

Globalization Impacts On The Poor And Inequality - Essay Example Financial integration should be accompanied with the pursuit of macroeconomic stabilization policies. Both traditional and modern trade theories suggest that gains from the free trade will not be distributed equally within economies. The World Bank studies several ways in which globalization affects inequality within and across countries. A very important factor in the distribution of income is the initial income of the country. The empirical literature reveals that free trade contributes only to 20% of the world inequality, being less important than such factors as technological innovations or demographic changes. The economists use the term globalization to refer to international integration in the capital, commodity, and labor markets. The crucial economic features of the two most recent periods of globalization (1950-73 and 1974-2007) involve increased integration in trade, international capital flows and movement of labor. However, as we can see in table 1 (WTO,2008), there are differences in the importance of these factors in each period. During the entire 1950-2007 period, the trade expanded by 6.2 percent. In the first decades after World War II (WWII), due to the reconstruction of the country economies, the most dynamic traders were the Western European countries and Japan.From 1974 to 2000, newly industrialized Asian economies (NIEs) were the main beneficiaries of globalization, with their merchandise exports comprising raising from 2.4 percent to 9.7 percent within only two decades.