Prime Movers of Globalization

Author: Vaclav Smil
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262518767
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
The story of how diesel engines and gas turbines, used to power cargo ships and jet airplanes, made today's globally integrated economy possible. The many books on globalization published over the past few years range from claims that the world is flat to an unlikely rehabilitation of Genghis Khan as a pioneer of global commerce. Missing from these accounts is a consideration of the technologies behind the creation of the globalized economy. What makes it possible for us to move billions of tons of raw materials and manufactured goods from continent to continent? Why are we able to fly almost anywhere on the planet within twenty-four hours? In Prime Movers of Globalization, Vaclav Smil offers a history of two key technical developments that have driven globalization: the high-compression non-sparking internal combustion engines invented by Rudolf Diesel in the 1890s and the gas turbines designed by Frank Whittle and Hans-Joachim Pabst von Ohain in the 1930s. The massive diesel engines that power cargo ships and the gas turbines that propel jet engines, Smil argues, are more important to the global economy than any corporate structure or international trade agreement. Smil compares the efficiency and scale of these two technologies to prime movers of the past, including the sail and the steam engine. The lengthy processes of development, commercialization, and diffusion that the diesel engine and the gas turbine went through, he argues, provide perfect examples of gradual technical advances that receive little attention but have resulted in epochal shifts in global affairs and the global economy.

Prime Movers of Globalization

Author: Vaclav Smil
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0262518767
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Globalization from Below

Author: Gordon Mathews
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415535085
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
This book deals ethnographically with economic globalization from below in its broadest sense, from producers to traders to vendors to consumers across the globe.

Deviant Globalization

Author: Nils Gilman
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441178104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
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Why Globalization Works

Author: Martin Wolf
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300251734
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 690

Book Description
A powerful case for the global market economy The debate on globalization has reached a level of intensity that inhibits comprehension and obscures the issues. In this book a highly distinguished international economist scrupulously explains how globalization works as a concept and how it operates in reality. Martin Wolf confronts the charges against globalization, delivers a devastating critique of each, and offers a realistic scenario for economic internationalism in the future. Wolf begins by outlining the history of the global economy in the twentieth century and explaining the mechanics of world trade. He dissects the agenda of globalization’s critics, and rebuts the arguments that it undermines sovereignty, weakens democracy, intensifies inequality, privileges the multinational corporation, and devastates the environment. The author persuasively defends the principles of international economic integration, arguing that the biggest obstacle to global economic progress has been the failure not of the market but of politics and government, in rich countries as well as poor. He examines the threat that terrorism poses and maps the way to a global market economy that can work for everyone.

Globalization

Author: Jürgen Osterhammel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691133956
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
In this work, Jurgen Osterhammel and Niels Petersson make the case that globalization is not so new, after all. Arguing that the world did not turn "global" overnight, the book traces the emergence of globalization over the past seven or eight centuries. In fact, the authors write, the phenomenon can be traced back to early modern large-scale trading, for example, the silk trade between China and the Mediterranean region, the shipping routes between the Arabian Peninsula and India, and the more frequently travelled caravan routes of the Near East and North Africa, all conduits for people, goods, coins, artwork, and ideas.

Globalization and History

Author: Kevin H. O'Rourke
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262650595
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Book Description
Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson present a coherent picture of trade, migration, and international capital flows in the Atlantic economy in the century prior to 1914—the first great globalization boom, which anticipated the experience of the last fifty years. Globalization is not a new phenomenon, nor is it irreversible. In Gobalization and History, Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson present a coherent picture of trade, migration, and international capital flows in the Atlantic economy in the century prior to 1914—the first great globalization boom, which anticipated the experience of the last fifty years. The authors estimate the extent of globalization and its impact on the participating countries, and discuss the political reactions that it provoked. The book's originality lies in its application of the tools of open-economy economics to this critical historical period—differentiating it from most previous work, which has been based on closed-economy or single-sector models. The authors also keep a close eye on globalization debates of the 1990s, using history to inform the present and vice versa. The book brings together research conducted by the authors over the past decade—work that has profoundly influenced how economic history is now written and that has found audiences in economics and history, as well as in the popular press.

Globalization

Author: Michael M. Weinstein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231134583
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
Ten experts offer forthright views on the problems & promises of globalisation.

From Global to Local

Author: Finbarr Livesey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101871229
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
This brilliantly original book dismantles the underlying assumptions that drive the decisions made by companies and governments throughout the world, to show that our shared narrative of the global economy is deeply flawed. If left unexamined, they will lead corporations and countries astray, with dire consequences for us all. For the past fifty years or so, the global economy has been run on three big assumptions: that globalization will continue to spread, that trade is the engine of growth and development, and that economic power is moving from the West to the East. More recently, it has also been taken as a given that our interconnectedness—both physical and digital—will increase without limit. But what if all these ideas are wrong? What if everything is about to change? What if it has already begun to change but we just haven't noticed? Increased automation, the advent of additive manufacturing (3D printing, for example), and changes in shipping and environmental pressures, among other factors, are coming together to create a fast-changing global economic landscape in which the rules are being rewritten—at once a challenge and an opportunity for companies and countries alike.

Globalization and the American Century

Author: Alfred E. Eckes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521009065
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
Revolutionary improvements in technology combined with the leadership elite's enthusiasm for de-regulation of markets and free trade to fuel American-style globalization. The nation rose to economic power after the Spanish-American War, and won both world wars and the Cold war, after which America's power and cultural influence soared as business and financial interests pursued the long-term quest for global markets. But, the tragic events of September 2001 and the growing volatility of global finance, raised questions about whether the era of American-led globalization was sustainable, or vulnerable to catastrophic collapse.