globalization related research topics

266 Globalization Essay Topics & Globalization Research Topics

Welcome to our list of globalization topics and essay ideas! Here, you will find plenty of current topics about globalization trends, benefits, and challenges. But that’s not all of it! In addition to topic ideas, you will also find examples of research papers and globalization essays. Check them out below!

🔝 Top 7 Globalization Topics for Research

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Apple Inc. Affected by Globalization and Technology
The Effects of Globalization to Employment and International Trade
Evaluating Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
Globalization’ Positive and Negative Effects
Impacts of Globalization on the Developing Countries
Globalization Impact on Sustainable Agriculture
Globalization and Its Impact on Society
Contemporary Globalization and Its Impact As Shakespeare predicted a long time ago, the world is shrinking into a small global scene where everyone has a role to play.
Globalization Impacts on Trade and Employment Globalization refers to the integration of the world markets. It facilitates smooth movement of goods and people from one country to another.
Apple Inc.’s Globalization Strategy and International Trade This paper will discuss Apple’s globalization strategy, global actions advocated for by this company, and how it facilitates international trade.
Globalization and Corporate Social Responsibility The topic chosen for this research is globalization and corporate social responsibility because it is a unique and novel concept for transnational businesses.
Globalization’s Role for Developing Countries: Zambia In this paper, the results of globalization and its positive and negative consequences are discussed through the case of Zambia and the condition of its economy.
Communication Technology and Globalization Growth in communication networks brought out by information technology witnessed a stream of expansion of products and ideas breaking geographic boundaries.
The Effects of Globalization on Sports For many people in the world, globalization is the revolution of the future. Conversely, this is not true as globalization exists in the present day.
Is Globalization a Threat or an Opportunity to Developing Countries? The topic on the effects of globalization has generated a lot of debate in trying to analyze its contribution to either the success or failure of some aspects of economies.
The Impact of Technology on Globalization The paper states that advances in technology have contributed to the main forces behind globalization. Organizations are compelled to become global.
Globalization in Media: Pros and Cons Globalization in the media sphere is influenced by changes in political and cultural spheres bringing new economic opportunities and financial capitals to media giants.
The Impact of Globalization on World Politics Globalization as the process that creates preconditions for the eventual emergence of World Government, which will exercise an authority over planet’s natural and human resources.
The Advantages of Globalization Globalization is the process of growth and interconnection of world economies and cultures, which are aided by transport and trade.
Globalization’s Impact on International Marketing Strategies International marketing strategies are influenced by globalization. The operations of multinational firms are shaped by the confrontation between standardization and adaptation.
Americanization Is Not a Synonym for Globalization Globalization is the process of international integration, whereas Americanization means the influence of American culture on other countries’ cultural development.
Globalization and Its Ethical Implications The paper states that the negative implications of globalization result in ethical dilemmas as people with diverse backgrounds participate in world development.
Dell Business Model: Globalization & Corporate Strategy The Dell Computer company research and development department is mandated with the task of advising the company on the nature of products it should manufacture.
Globalization Advantages and Negative Cultural Impact This paper focuses on globalization. Drivers of the globalization agenda are multinationals corporations, international financial markets, and transnational agencies.
Ethics and Globalization in Business A business will only manage to keep up its reputation if it recognizes the established business ethics in its environment. Every firm must follow to the letter the code of conduct.
Ford Motor Company’s Globalization Strategy This paper assesses Bangladesh and Rwanda as the two potential countries for Ford to globalize its operations. They are among the best fast-growing economies.
Globalization in Anthropological Perspective The anthropological perspective is a powerful model that guides scholars to analyze human diversity and empower individuals from different backgrounds.
Ways of Eating Around the World: Impact of Globalization Globalization is essentially to blame for the rapid rise in obesity and foodborne illness resulting from improved access to a diverse range of healthy foods.
Social Media Impact on Globalization Among the many drivers of globalization, the advancement of digital social media platforms has been one of the most influential.
Impact of Globalization on Norms and Experiences around Gender Inequality is one of the most prolonged global debates that have refused to go away despite the great strides made through globalization
Impact of Globalization on Netflix Company Netflix made two significant strategic moves that led to its success. The company did not explore all the available markets at once but in phases.
Importance of Globalization on International Business Globalization is very important in that it promotes worldwide growth as well as promotes peaceful coexistence globally through understanding.
Impact of Globalization on Australia Globalization has enhanced the quality of life in Australia due to the fact that foreign investors are allowed to open up ventures in the country.
Globalization and Cultural Hybridization Globalization affects all spheres of human activity starting from education, policy, management, and ending with art, culture, etc.
Pros and Cons of Globalization The advantages of globalization outweigh the disadvantages. The concept has enhanced the rapid developments of impoverished nations.
How Globalization Affects Governance? The process of globalization inevitably affects governance all over the world. In this paper, the peculiarities of the process of affecting governance by globalization will be addressed in detail.
Bauman’s Concept of Globalization in Understanding the Rise in Human Displacement This paper discusses the concept of globalization as viewed by Bauman, assesses the concept of increasing numbers of refugees, asylum seekers, and economic migrants in the world.
Globalization and Democratization Relationship This paper explores the existing relationship between democracy and globalization. It focuses on democratization, globalization and their imperativeness.
The Impact of Globalization Discussing globalization objectively in its entirety is a challenging endeavor, since it touches upon almost every aspect of the modern world, and its influences differ from one region to the other.
Effects of Globalization: The Case of LuLu Group Int To summarize this paper, globalization is an unstoppable interstate integration process, leading to the erasure of national boundaries and the formation of a single cultural layer
Why Youth and Community Workers Should Understand Globalization?
What Has Been the Effect of Globalization on Terrorism?
Who Are the Main Losers in the Process of Globalization?
Why Is Customer Service Needed in the Globalization of Logistics?
Why Resisting Globalization Can Be Reasonable?
Why Are the Critics So Convinced That Globalization Is Bad for the Poor?
What Would Our Nation Do Without Globalization and International Trade?
What Are the Costs and Benefits of Globalization?
Why Globalization Manufacturing Since the 1980s Has Changed Labor Relations?
Why Did General Motors fail to Compete With Globalization?
What Are the Challenges of International Development in the Age of Globalization?
What Impact Does Globalization Have On E-commerce?
Does Globalization Benefit Both Developed and Developing Countries?
What the Public Should Know About Globalization and the World Trade Organization?
What Are the Positive and Negative Effects of Globalization?
Why Did Germany’s Hidden Champions Succeed in Globalization?
Who Benefits From Globalization of Labor?
Does Economic Globalization Affect Interstate Military?
What Does the Globalization of Drug Trade Benefit?
Why Does Globalization Generate Winners and Losers?
The Impact of Globalization on Immigration Control Globalization is one of the key factors that influence immigration. The effects are extensive to the extent of complicating the efforts of controlling immigration.
Globalization and Human Resource Policies and Practices The current paper aims to discuss the concept of globalizing HR policies and the potential positive and negative outcomes of this process.
Globalization of Video Games and Its Influence in the Society The research paper describes the positive impact of gaming, such as reducing flashbacks from posttraumatic stress defects and chronic pain reduction.
Globalization Affecting the Role of Leaders in Organizations Globalization is influencing leadership because of the way it affects society through its processes. It has caused changes in the political, social, and economical aspects.
Coca-Cola Company’s Strategy & Globalization Issues Multinational corporations are increasing day by day and they are usually criticized because of issues like environmental stability, sustainability etc.
Globalization: More Positive Effects Than Negative Ones Globalization refers to the “increasing interconnectedness of people and places through the converging process of economic, political and cultural change.”
Globalization’s Impact on Education Globalization will likely diversify educational opportunities while diminishing the competitive advantages of weaker educational systems.
Peru – Globalization, Environment, Crime and Disease The paper synthesizes a number of legitimate sources to focus on globalization and its effects on Peru with special relation to environmental issues, crime, and diseases.
“The Globalization of Markets” by Theodore Levitt In his article “The Globalization of Markets,” Theodore Levitt anticipated the effects of globalization and advancement in technology to international business.
“The Globalization of Eating Disorders” by Susan Bordo This paper analyzes the text of an article written in 2002 by Susan Bordo, an American professor, and philosopher, whose works are marked by several prestigious awards.
Coca – Cola: Business Strategy and Globalization The presence of the globalization phenomenon in the Company’s strategy can be proven by its effective presence in more then two hundred countries around the world.
Regional Integration Inconsistency with Globalization With the term of Globalization being in vogue and regional integration agreements being signed across the globe, the coalition of the concepts has been questioned.
Globalization and Health A planned urban society has access to safe and clean drinking water with appropriate sanitation and waste removal mechanisms.
The Globalization of Walmart Back in the 1990s, Walmart planned to conquer nations with large populations and growing purchasing power: Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, and China.
Qualitative Threshold: Globalization and Communication Technologies Globalization is a long-term phenomenon involving a gradual change of events. This process has occurred in distinct phases with each having unique characteristics.
Globalization Influence on Product Development This essay presents a critical analysis of the marketing strategies as they apply to the international marketing efforts of firms in the context of globalization.
Globalization Effect on Small and Medium Size Business This section will introduce the paper based on the concept that globalization and development of SMEs may not be separated from each other.
Globalization Theories in the Business Environment The paper elaborates on the neo-classical, Marxist and structuralist perspectives on globalization before closing with the most concurrent theorem out of the three perspectives.
China’s Aviation Industry: Impact of Globalization This paper investigates the impact of globalization on China’s aviation industry. The report covers a wide range of topics, including history, global treaties, and critical forces.
Netflix’s Globalization in Brazil The modern world has become more connected due to globalization and multinational dependence on areas that support socioeconomic development.
The Impact of Racism on Globalization Racism is a great impediment to globalization, the bad blood between the said people of color and those of no color has dealt a big blow to development.
Globalization and Diversity in TEDx Talk Shows This paper examines TEDx talk shows that discuss diversity and globalization issues and how globalization can reduce poverty levels in developing economies.
Globalization: Managing Across Cultures Managing across culture is a product of globalization, that expatriate from a foreign culture moves to a totally new culture and is required to manage people from diverse cultures and backgrounds.
Globalization Essence by M. Steger and N. Bisley Globalization: A very short introduction by Manfred Steger and Rethinking globalization by Nick Bisley define the necessity to treat the globalization and consider its complexity.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Globalization The fourth industrial revolution has made it possible for countries and manufacturing companies to produce and stabilize their economies.
Globalization as a Phenomenon and Its Impacts Globalization is a phenomenon, which has been made possible due to the development of communication technologies and multifaceted relationships among countries.
Total Quality Management: Impact of Globalization on Quality There are several ways to ensure that information technology (IT) has been implemented into a business process with respects to Total Quality Management (TQM).
International Marketing – Impact of Globalization This paper seeks to identify the impact of globalization in international business and how companies can fully utilize the concept in order to attain their objectives
Globalization and the Social Interest of Workers The paper sets out to demonstrate that globalization is not in the social interest of low-wage workers in developing nations and factory workers in the developed countries.
Globalization in Modern Business Along with the development of technology, communication, and transportation, it becomes easier for companies to expand the scope of their operations and enter new markets.
Relationship Between Urbanization, Globalization, and People The relationship between urbanization, globalization, and people is one of the most interesting and provocative topics in many discussions.
History of Globalization and World Integration The process of globalization is often viewed as an exclusively modern phenomenon that has arisen due to the development of multinational corporations.
Outsourcing and Globalization as Driving Force The major driving forces behind outsourcing include the force of globalization, cost of production, labor issues, and the problem of unionization.
Globalization in a Global Economy World economies and societies have come together to work as a global economy by having common means of transportation, communication, and marketing.
Impact of New Technologies and Globalization on Literature The issue of globalization’s effect on the development of different countries has always been rather controversial.
Globalization’s Role in Improving Women’s Rights On the one hand, globalization unites people and makes them follow the same standards or use similar opportunities.
Globalization and Cultural Diversity in the Workplace Cultural diversity should be incorporated into the company’s policies combined with teaching workers this fundamental issue in the business environment.
Globalization and Technology Impacts on Ethics The evaluation will center on analyzing how technology and globalization have contributed to the spread of poverty in third-world nations, violated individuals’ rights to privacy.
Economic Globalization and Daily Life The stated factors belong to the concept of economic globalization, which implies the process through which states and corporations expand to the global scale.
Issues in the International Politics: Globalization Globalization in the international political system is considered to be centralized due to its impact on external links and close connection with political structures and mechanisms
Globalization and National Security Issues International security researchers have taken side of the big debate, with some arguing that globalization has indeed contributed to national and international security.
Leadership and Globalization in the US and Japan Leadership is a social influence in which a person can motivate or influence others and acquire their support in order to work together and accomplish a certain task.
Impact of Globalization on Gender Norms and Experiences The contemporary world is characterized by economic, social, cultural, and political integration of both men and women across all spheres.
John Deere Company in View of Globalization John Deere is one of the most successful agricultural machinery companies in the world today. In 1963, the company became the world’s largest manufacturer.
Economic Globalization: The Role of Geography Globalization is by no means a modern phenomenon closely connected with the geographical structure of the world and location of a particular country.
Human Resources Management and How It Is Affected by Globalization and Technology? HRM functions have been widely affected by the changing trends around the world: various parts of the world are integrating, newer technologies and better concepts are evolving.
Globalization of the SK-II Brand SK-II Brand has been said to concentrate on its core business through innovation, expanding penetration in developing countries and restructuring its existing business.
The Impact of Globalization on Labor Market and Trade Globalization is the process that refers to the coming together of the international markets. This report examines the impacts of globalization on trade and employment.
Project Management Analysis and Globalization Technological supply chain management strategies and the development of dependable distribution systems in globalization are crucial components.
Globalization Effect on Social Movements Adapting to communication trends is a common theme in successful movements, which is only a small part of the process known as globalization.
Economic Globalization and Labour Rights The comprehensive study investigates the impact of economic globalization on labour rights in developing countries.
Globalization and Economic Inequality The debate on the issue of economic inequality mitigation has been one of the central aspects of global discussion for decades.
Why Globalization Causes Turbulence and Disruption Globalization compromised people’s freedom of choice and action as it allowed multinational enterprises to impact human behavior using technologies.
Motivation and Globalization in Multinational Companies Motivation in the case of globalization becomes a burning issue of multinational companies as they should establish the most appropriate way to motivate their employees.
TNCs Contribution to Globalization of Retail Industry Transnational corporations make a great contribution to globalization issues and development of the global industry structure.
Air Transport and Its Benefits for Globalization With excellent transportation systems, the world is exposed to better trading in terms of exports and imports of goods and services.
Spiritual Perspectives on Globalization by Ira Rifkin Cultural element of globalization describes regional side and national cultural peculiarities which are seen by the world society.
Globalization and Its Pros and Cons It is hard to disagree that there is probably nothing universally positive or negative in this world. Everything has a price.
Food and Water Security as Globalization Issues Globalization has several implications for the business environment, among which are the expanded access to resources, and the interdependence of international companies.
Globalization: Impact on Modern Society Globalization contributes to establishing relationships between individuals, independent social objects, and phenomena, embracing all spheres of people’s lives.
Globalization Opportunities and Challenges for Companies A company that adheres to the market development strategy should analyze the opportunities and challenges of globalization.
Globalization, Its Defenders and Critics Globalization is an ambiguous process with its advantages and disadvantages. It is impossible without significant changes in the ordinary life of people.
Evaluation of the Meaning and Impact of Globalization in Relation to Criminal Justice The globalization process has a significant impact on criminal justice. Globalization has led to increased interdependence among various economies.
The Dark Side of Globalization Buoyancy on the Bayou: Shrimpers Face the Rising Tide of Globalization by Jill Ann Harrison explores the effect of globalization on local worlds.
Free Trade as a Fundamental Principle of Modern Globalization Free trade has become critical in the globalized world by expanding diversity of not just goods, but technology and workforce.
Role of Globalization in Asian Market Globalization has created international markets for organizations. It has the potential to transform what it means for a company work and thrive in a foreign market.
Globalization and Education – Economic, Political and Cultural Dimensions The surge in Information technology usage, increasing interest in the Internet, and global communication have melted the country’s borders in terms of education availability.
Globalization Negative Effects on Canadian Labour Union Globalization is directly and indirectly affected labor unions in Canada. Positive effect was in form of developing the country’s economy and creating job opportunities to Canadian citizens.
Globalization and Its Impact on Firms Countless changes have occurred as a result of globalization, and firms have to adjust to these changes. Globalization is not all positive for organizations and countries.
International Organizations Role in Globalization Process The representatives of international organizations have a common agenda: turning the world into a “global village” and prompting the world’s population to think of neoLiberalism.
Leadership in the Context of Globalization This paper aims to outline the issue of leadership in the context of globalization, conduct a GAP analysis, offer recommendations for developing necessary leadership competencies.
Globalization vs. Traditions in Eastern Culture Because of the increasing pace of globalization, the cultures of different states mix up, thus, blurring the distinctions between the East and the West.
Ethics in Reporting: Globalization and Media Ethics in reporting tends to distance itself from the manipulation of the media, which advocates for a well-organized and political dichotomization in media reportage.
Globalization Impact on Trade and Employment One of the notable effects of globalization is heightened trade liberalization and opening up of global labor markets.
Aspects of Globalization: Positive and Negative Effects This paper will explore the aspects of globalization in economic terms, preference on international trade by national economies, the Americans and Europeans’ dependency on Asia for production.
Singapore Globalization: Criterias and Ranks Singapore is the most globalized country in the world in 2009. It is open to trade; has capital and labor movements, cultural integration; exchanges technology and ideas.
Globalization and Indigenous Communities in Canada In Canada, indigenous people feel both the austerities of environmental and cultural destruction and the potential for development.
Globalization and Geographic Information System Globalization is the process by which the globe becomes increasingly interconnected due to the exchange of commodities and services, information, knowledge, and cultural values.
Interconnection of Globalization and Culture Despite serious issues, globalization has encouraged the funding of various initiatives in contemporary acts, contributing to the development of the market.
The Social Media Impact on Globalization This paper explains the impact of media on globalization and how it has affected businesses. Many people are currently using social media to run business organizations.
Reflection of “Globalization of Missions” Article The “Globalization of Missions: An Exegesis on the Great Commission” article is the author’s call for making proselytizing more aware of non-Western cultures.
Globalization and Health Systems in India This research paper examines the effects of globalization on India’s healthcare system. It explores various areas such as healthcare delivery, acquisition, financing, and ethics.
Geographical Diversification and Globalization With current terms of business operations between countries, it has been possible for businesses to diversify their market by venturing into other local and international markets.
Process of Globalization and Nationalist Movements The transition between globalism and nationalism is frequently perceived as a threat to the government and its people.
International Finance and Globalization The monetary authorities of a country can use monetary tools to keep the value of their currencies lower than the value which would have been set by the market forces.
The Positive and Negative Aspects of Globalization Globalization is the result of many socio-economic processes associated with the widespread use of information technology and new means of communication.
“Globalization, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society: Sociological Perspectives: 2” by Peter Jarvis The book by Peter Jarvis “Globalization, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society: Sociological Perspectives: 2” is a research book with an overall perspective on the value of education.
Globalization and Transformative Process Drivers This paper will discuss the meaning of globalization and the factors contributing to the global transformation process.
Asian Film Industry Globalization Before 1997, most of the East Asian film industry was purely based within the region and marred with little success. Two political and economic events that year marked a turning point for this industry.
International Economy. Oakley’s Globalization Theory In “International Political Economy,” Thomas Oakley discusses globalization, its drivers, and its effects on various actors in the international scene.
Geographical Conditions’ Affect of Globalization The scholars of the 20th century conceptualized this idea, by creating the North-South divide – a geographic line between the countries that signifies the division on wealthy and emerging nations
Supply Chain Management in Globalization Era In the accelerating process of globalization, supply chain management is an integral part of most organizations which is essential to a company’s success.
Globalization Concept and Its Impact on the State Globalization does not make the state redundant. On the contrary, it makes it important for the full exploitation of the opportunities that come as a result of international integration.
Hard Rock Café: E-Commerce and Globalization Hard Rock Café can utilize ICT and e-commerce models by hiring customer care executives working from home and submitting their work loads to the café’s head quarters.
Millenium Development Goals and Globalization The major objective of Development Goals is to foster the positive development of the world in the new century, thus making human lives better.
Modern Imperialism and Economic Globalization This paper discusses how does the study of modern imperialism help us to understand why some former colonies fear economic globalization today.
Religion, Globalization, and Language in China This research paper examines the problems of religion, globalization, and language from the Chinese perspective.
Globalization and Use of Fossil Fuel as Environmental Threats Both the process of globalization and the burning of fossil fuels have been significant contributors to the deterioration of the environment’s health on a worldwide scale.
Reshaping Globalization and Digital Media Over the decades, distinctive events and activities have contributed to the construction of the current global spectrum.
Education Under Impact of Globalization The negative impact of globalization was the widening gap in access to education. Globalization has made English the main language of education, which can lead to discrimination.
Globalization and Technological Development Technological development continues to facilitate globalization, with individuals from third-world countries coming to the forefront of the modern workforce.
The Globalization Impact on Cultural Production Human culture is evolving in the context of globalization, as many states are no longer in colonial relationships. It leads to global hegemony and diminishing diversity.
Addressing Global Inequality in the Era of Globalization While globalization has led to social, political, and economic increase, it has also given rise to global inequality, particularly through the exploitation of developing countries.
Netflix: Globalization and Information Research In a three-stage expansion process, Netflix could make strategic decisions and establish effective policies in those markets
Globalization: Impact on International Business With higher levels of globalization, the overall international business will be safer as there will be more suppliers and manufacturers on the market.
Response to Globalization Pressure This paper aims to introduce a plan of action to ensure my continued employability as a professional in the sphere of international affairs.
Globalization and its Impact on the World A phenomenon that gathered speed after World War II, globalization has tremendously impacted the international economy, society, and culture by enabling greater interconnectedness and cross-border exchange of people and ideas. Globalization is a complex phenomenon that has benefited developed countries economically while unfairly distributing wealth to underdeveloped nations and disenfranchising…
The Globalization Impact on the US Foreign Policy The ability of the US to use its influence to alter international events is limited by globalization. America cannot deal with the issues brought on by globalization on its own.
Effects of Colonialism and Globalization During the era of colonialism, colonies were perceived to be a major source of raw materials for the industries of the developed nations.
Globalization Challenges in Developing Countries and Japan The participation of nations in global trade has several benefits, even though various problems impede countries from accessing global markets.
Globalization and Democratic Peace Theory In the context of globalization, it is necessary to consider the theory of democratic peace, which recognizes democracy as the best form of government for society.
Globalization: Climate Crisis and Capitalist Ideology One of the main features of the development of the world community in recent decades has been globalization as part of integration processes that are changing the world structure.
The Phenomenon of Terrorism and Its Relation to Globalization This paper states that the phenomenon of terrorism is tightly connected to the concept of inequality of globalization.
Globalization and Its Scale in the World Regardless of all opportunities provided by technological progress, the world remains less globalized than the majority of people expect.
Globalization and Poverty: Trade Openness and Poverty Reduction in Nigeria Globalization can be defined as the process of interdependence on the global culture, economy, and population. It is brought about by cross-border trade.
The Impact of Globalization on Business in India and the USA Since globalization started to affect the economy of the USA and India, it has had various positive and negative impacts on business.
Impact of Progressive Globalization One of the key processes in the development of the world economy on the verge of the XX-XXI centuries is the progressive globalization.
Globalization After World War I The emergence of the global economy corresponds to the aftermath of World War I, and the battle of governments and markets for control over the field brought unexpected results.
Globalization and Christian Mission Globalization has changed the landscape of industrial and business environments, and religion was inevitably affected by it, as well.
Researching the Concept of Globalization The paper aims to analyze the global playing field and support it with arguments why it is considered to be level.
Globalization: Beauty Sculpt for You
Ethnic Violence in the Era of Economic Globalization
Globalization Impact on Socioeconomic Inequality
Solving Problems Through Globalization
Globalization and Personal Identity Intersection
Negative Sentiments Against Trade and Globalization
Anthropocene and Its Role in Globalization
Globalization Strategies for Multinational Enterprises
Human Sense of Place in the Context of Globalization
American Dominant Minority Relations and Impact of Globalization
Hip Hop’s Globalization and Influence of Hip-Hop Music in Japan
The Effects of Globalization on the Environment
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Globalization
Wireless Industry and Globalization for US Economy
Globalization: Arguments For and Against
Global Poverty and Economic Globalization Relations
“Globalization” by Peter Temin: Article Analysis
Globalization and Technology in Health Care
Economics: The Impact of Globalization
Globalization of Nursing: Infant Mortality Rate in the US and Other States
Foreign Direct Investment: Globalization of Production
Globalization: On the Importance of ICT & Transnational Corporations
The Facets of Globalization in Internet Security
Cultural Globalization as the Americanization of the World’s Cultures
Globalization and American Productivity
Globalization and Competition: The USA, Western Europe, Japan
Tangible & Inevitable: Globalization as a Worldwide Phenomenon
How Residents of Georgia Understand and React to Globalization
Pop Culture as a Potent Globalization Tool
The Financial Crisis and Its Connection With Globalization
The Effects of Globalization on Trade
Capitalism, Climate Change, and Globalization
Globalization of Healthcare in the US and Haiti
Globalization and Related Environmental Issues
Globalization and the Formation of New Claims
Overcoming CSR Challenges in the Age of Globalization
Present Day Resistance Historical Roots to the Trade Globalization
Energy Crisis: The Processes of Globalization and the Unification
Long-Term Impacts of the Chinese-American Trade War and Globalization of the World Economy
Chinese Companies and Globalization Issues
Global Governance Institutions in Context of Globalization
Leadership and Organizational Change: Diversity and Globalization
Globalization and Career of University of East London’s Students
Globalization: Impact and Consequences
Globalization and Its Effects on World Economies
“The Globalization of American Law” by R. D. Kelemen and E. C. Sibbitt
Globalization and Immigration: Globalization Policies
Education With Regard to Globalization Issues
Whether Globalization Makes Consumer Powerless?
World Is Flat: Globalization Effect
Environment: Rapid Increasing in Industrialization and Globalization
Ethics In The Business Globalization
Contemporary Globalization Since 1914
Survival of Minority Ethnic Groups in Globalization
“Globalization, Poverty and Inequality” by Kaplinsky
Globalization’s Impact on Banks in Canada
Global Politics: Women’s Rights, Economy, Globalization
Globalization and Cultural Difference of Societies
Globalization, the Sex Trade and HIV-AIDS
Media Production and Connections in Globalization
China’s Impact on Globalization and International Security
Three Areas of Concern for Committee on Globalization
Moving Away From Globalization: Consequences
Globalization and Russian Influence
Globalization and Knowledge Management
Market Globalization and Global Marketing Pitfalls
“The Globalization of Markets” Book by Levitt
American Popular Culture and Globalization Effects
Chapters 2 and 9 of “Sociology of Globalization” by Smith
Human Rights, Globalization and Economic Development
Globalization Influences Discussed in TED Talks
Education History and Globalization
Globalization and Its Consequences: Economic Crossroads
Germany’ Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization
Globalization Effect on Developing Countries’ Business
Identity Politics as a Response to Globalization
Globalization and Cultural Knowledge of China
The Pitfalls of Globalization
Globalization and Its Benefits for the United States
Globalization and Businesses in New Economies
The Effect of Globalization in Economic Development
The Globalization Index and Singapore as the Leading State
Evaluating the Effects: Advantages of Globalization
Child Labor Role in Westernization and Globalization
Globalization Impacts on the United Nations Institution
Globalization and Citizenship in EU

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This essay topic collection was updated on January 21, 2024 .

Globalization Topics for Any Purpose

Perhaps each student had to deal with a problem when they need to come up with a good research topic about globalization. We love to help students like you, and we decided to present great ideas about globalization. Take one of them (without turning evil) and write a globalization essay sample or speech on it, or make a presentation.

Cause and effect topics related to globalization

To what extent does globalization affect my/our identity?
The effect of globalization on marketing strategies within the hospitality industry in the Caribbean.
How has globalization in sports affected the Netherlands?
How did globalization affect the company General Electric?
How did globalization affect the strategy of Starbucks?
How did globalization affect Italy?
How has international interdependence affected the rise of globalization, what caused this all, how has it affected both rich and poor nations, and is it overall for the best?
The socio-political effects of the globalization of the IT industry.
How did globalization affect Thailand?
How has the Internet affected Globalization?
Is the effect of globalization more positive or negative on the environment?
How does globalization affect Islam?
How is the state affected by globalization? How is the nation affected by globalization? Do these institutions/concepts remain relevant? Why or why not?
How does the Internet and the associated World Wide Web affect international business activity and the globalization of the world economy?
In what ways has globalization affected the relationship between Taiwan and China?

Controversial globalization topics

Self-colonization of foreigners’ images in Chinese war films in the era of reforms and globalization.
How is trade related to globalization?
What are the implications of globalization on homeland security?
Why does globalization lead to economic growth?
Where is globalization likely to take us in the next 50 years? Include 5 topics from the course (ex. family, crime, deviance, health).
Globalization and corruption in Europe and Russia.
The effect of globalization on Zara Jeans.
Influence of globalization in democratization in the Middle East.
Would the company or companies of your choice benefit from any form of participation in a sharing economy? Include aspects such as globalization, human resource management, and law.
How does globalization and a country’s domestic programs shape their national sports programs and national identity?
Has globalization made a significant impact on India’s society, economy, and geopolitical status?
Globalization and human life.

Globalization topics for presentation

The globalization of the Cold War.
Globalization and workers’ interests.
The impact of globalization in Korea.
Globalization and Russia’s Internet censorship.
The relation of water pollution in China and globalization.
The influence of globalization for humankind.
Globalization and Disney.
The effect of globalization on the US labor market.
Globalization and gentrification in New York City.
Consumer behavior since the beginning of globalization.
Cotton as a key commodity in the development of globalization.
Is it good or bad for mankind?

Globalization topics for research proposal

Globalization and development in Pakistan.
Globalization in America.
Globalization strategies of Toyota, Volkswagen, and Ford.
Globalization and the critical pollution problem of Mexico City.
The negative effect of cultural globalization on the Chinese film industry.
The influence of globalization on China in the 21st century.
Globalization and the food supply for Ukraine.
Types of globalization: economic, cultural, and technological.
The impact of the globalization in the global market.
Intermodal transportation and globalization.
Globalization and indigenous communities in Peru.

Argumentative essay topics on globalization

What has been the impact of globalization? Has it been overall positive or negative?
What are the meanings of sustainability and globalization to you, both personally and in the context of your family history?
Buddhism has adapted to many cultural and societal changes as it has spread around the globe throughout history. How have modernity and globalization influenced the message and expansion of Buddhism within recent history?
Which has had a bigger effect on war: the aftermath of the Cold War, or globalization? Why?
Do the positive impacts of globalization outweigh the negative impacts of it in East Asian countries?
What are the effects of globalization on the Bahamian economy? How does globalization affect the food supply for Lesotho?
What are the effects of globalization on Africa?
Is outsourcing a highly charged issue in the globalization of an economy?
What is the impact of globalization on business in Curacao?
Does the process of globalization help or hinder wealth creation in developing countries?

Where to get globalization essay writing help

There are several options where you can get globalization essay writing help.

Online writing services which offer essays for sale online . You can search for online writing services that specialize in providing essay writing help. These services usually have a team of experienced writers who can help you write an excellent globalization essay.
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Descriptive globalization essay topics

Describe water scarcity and its effect on Globalization.
Describe the pros and cons of globalization in Poland especially in the years since WWII, and demonstrate critical thinking on how Poland has been impacted by globalization.
Describe how globalization is good for the poor.
Describe how globalization reduces child labor.
Describe America’s responsibility in globalization.
Describe the economic globalization of Egypt.
Describe the impact of new technologies and globalization on domestic arrangements in the US.
Describe globalization in sports.
Describe the impact of globalization on the Nigerian economy.
Describe how companies across the world have benefited from globalization.
Describe L’Oreal and the globalization of American beauty.

Persuasive globalization paper topics

What is the impact of globalization on US businesses?
What is the impact of globalization on trade and employment?
How does economic globalization impact the local ethical culture?
How has globalization changed Venice (Italy)?
How has globalization of Islamophobia changed since 9/11?
Is globalization a new phenomenon or just a long-standing feature of capitalist development?
Are local cultures not severely threatened by globalization?
Why are Aboriginal people disadvantaged due to globalization?
How did China’s globalization of Alibaba develop?
Convergence or divergence: what is the future of globalization?
How does culture, language, the environment, marketing, and branding affect globalization in business?

Globalization research paper topics

Globalization and the destruction of local culture through economics.
The effects of globalization, both for the US and for other countries.
Globalization and its impact on the country’s distinctive culture.
Feminism and globalization.
Globalization in America in the 21st century.
The social impact of globalization in Africa (Nigeria and Ghana).
The impact of globalization on women.
Two opinions on McDonaldization: globalization or not?
The influence of globalization on health and lifestyle.
The impact of globalization on business strategies.
The role of globalization in promoting peaceful societies.

Globalization speech topics

Globalization and how it affects the social environment of America.
Globalization of higher education affecting financial operations of colleges and universities.
South Korean industry and the influence of globalization.
Race, class, and globalization in popular TV shows.
The effects of technology, modernism, and globalization on traditional cultures.
Globalization in the United Kingdom.
The positive influence of globalization on consumerism.
The influence of globalization on the arts in Panama.
The positive impact of globalization on an individual’s daily life.
The influence of social media and technology on American culture.

how to choose Globalization Essay topics

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549 Excellent Globalization Topics for Writing & Presentations

Not everyone knows it, but globalization is not a brand-new process that started with the advent of the Internet. In fact, it’s been around throughout all of human history. This makes the choice of topics related to globalization practically endless. 

If you need help choosing a writing idea, this Custom-Writing.org article is for you. Here, you will find 549 globalization topics for various assignments and a helpful writing guide.

🔝 Top 12 Globalization Topics

🚀 Research Topics
🙋‍ Topics for Presentation
🗺️ Essay Topics
🗣️ Topics for a Discussion
🤔 Essay Prompts
✏️ Writing Tips

🔗 References

Archaic vs. proto globalization
Political drivers of globalization
Why is globalization inevitable?
Music’s contribution to globalization
Is globalization a problem in business?
Advantages of economic interdependence
Globalization’s effect on communication
How is feminism related to interconnectedness?
Does cultural homogenization destroy diversity?
International recruiting as an effect of global networking
Is the COVID-19 pandemic the result of globalization?
Does globalization enhance teamwork in education?

🚀 Globalization Research Topics

How has globalization affected women’s economic rights?
Globalization’s influence on the women’s rights movement
Research the challenges caused by the power of globalization

Globalization is the process of increased collaboration and interdependence between countries.

The negative impact of globalization on Polynesian cultures
Impact of globalization on the economies of the developing countries
Study the contribution of global cooperation to the fight against serious diseases
Global networking as a way of sharing experiences between countries
How has globalization negatively impacted education ?
Evaluate the positive impact of globalization on education opportunities
The relationship between globalization and discrimination
Contribution of globalization to health policies and practices
Study the relationship between globalization and concentration of wealth
Basic concepts of the phenomenon of globalization
Global migration as the end of multiculturalism in the world
Explore how globalization affected the rise of migration
Globalization as a means of human trafficking
Impact of globalization on systematic conflict and state aggression
Internationalization as a driver of discrimination in education
Contribution of globalization to the music industry
Global interconnectedness as a reflection on protests and revolutions in the world
Globalization as a way of strengthening international communication
Study the link between globalization and the sustainability of resources
Globalization as a tool to inhibit small business
How does globalization affect competition in the global marketplace?
Globalization and work management in modern organizations
Enumerate the threats to the existence of globalization in times of increased nationalization
Can globalization cause wars?
Modern globalization as a response to the World Wars
Can specific legislation limit the adverse effects of internationalization?
Study feminism through the lens of globalization
The phenomenon of the global village in the modern world
The development of arts in the context of globalization
International sport as part of the worldwide interaction process
The Olympic Games as an outstanding example of globalization
Relationship between globalization and the development of technology
How does globalization promote the use of artificial intelligence ?
Ethical problems of globalization in contemporary society
The rise of anime as a product of cultural globalization
The dissemination of environmental awareness as part of global interdependence
Explain the effect of globalization on modern political systems
Would COVID-19 have happened without globalization?
The development of social networks in the era of globalization
Review the historical issues of the globalized world
Impact of globalization on the development of European countries
How has globalization affected the US economy?
The Russo-Ukrainian War as the consequence of global integration
Assess the contribution of globalization to relations between countries
Does globalization exist in the society of the future?
Global connectivity as a driving force in the spread of body shaming
The relationship between globalization and imperialism
Transconglomerates in the worldwide market
Study what characterizes partnerships in the international political arena
Evaluate the influence of global interdependence on the emergence of economic crises
The relationship between globalization and leadership in the workplace
Attitudes toward cross-border interactions in the movie Captain Fantastic
Consumer culture as a globalization phenomenon
Global creativity in today’s world
The positive impact of globalization on creativity
Transformation of interpersonal relations within globalization
How media hinders globalization in society
Globalization and production as a threat to the environment

Cultural Globalization Topics for Research

Study alternative ways of developing culture outside of globalization
American influence on the rest of the world is too great
Assess the waves of globalization in a historical context
Autonomy and cultural identity : how to safeguard culture
Can American dominance hinder the development of other cultures?
Cultural globalization has changed the idea of world communities
Write about current trends of smaller cultures moving toward globalization
Digital communication is the primary means of globalization
Do Europe and the US dominate the world market?
Research the ecological effects of increasing globalization
Freedom of movement as one of the rules of globalization
Global exploitation of poor regions: effects and problems
Globalization as the natural development of world communities
International cooperation is needed to create a diverse world community
Cross-border interactions help cultures get involved in economics and trade
Study the historical experiences of countries opposing globalization
How can we help developing countries integrate into the global community?
How does globalization help some countries but harm others?
Indigenous rights in international dialogue
Institutionalization makes globalization grow
International economics as the basis of globalization
Is equality attainable in the context of globalization?
Is globalization a consequence of European colonialism?
Is the loss of cultural consciousness possible in the context of globalization ?
Lack of objectivity as a consequence of cultural globalization
Threats to small linguistic groups due to the dominance of the English language
Study the main features of media coverage of cultural stereotypes
Migration of cultures is made possible by advances in technology
National stereotypes are fading due to the globalization effects
Study the possible negative consequences of cultural diversity
Peculiarities of intercultural dialogue with developing countries
Possibility of a conservative view of the world in the context of globalization
Potential adverse effects of urbanization of smaller cultures
Preserving linguistic diversity is the merit of globalization
Reasons for the exclusion of developing countries from the international dialogue
Study the resources for addressing the vulnerability of small cultures
Shared consumer culture as a product of globalization
Smaller cultures have become more visible thanks to globalization
Sources of healthy nationalism for the preservation of a culture
Assess the problems of cultural appropriation
Corporate social responsibility as a product of global collaboration
The current direction of cultural globalization
The development of cultural communities is achievable through global introductions
Study the distribution of goods and services in the twenty-first century
Globalization and the spread of social justice movements
The impact of international organizations on enhancing cultural visibility
Research the ways of cultural imposition through the proliferation of products
How does the openness of the world promote people’s autonomy in their choice of cultural symbols?
The nature of social interaction between different nationalities
Evaluate the need for communities to create a unified global cultural space
Why the phenomenon of cultural diffusion is a subject of debate in globalization
Study the effects of privatization of cultural structures and goods
The problem of cultural competition on the global stage
Write about the rate of growth of globalization throughout the world
The role of group identity in cultural unification
The spread of cultures is the merit of globalization
Suggest tools to preserve national unity in the era of globalization
Total isolation can lead to cultural degradation
Trade links are the primary connection between the world’s cultures
How transport technologies have brought globalization to a new level
Trends in the changing state of culture today
Ways of assimilating new cultural spaces and contexts
What are the threats to the unification of cultures?
Why is the perception of foreign cultures largely distorted?
Why do modern people need instant communication with each other?
Will anti-globalization do any good?

Negative Effects of Globalization: Research Topics

Globalization and its effects on the exacerbation of inequality
Job loss as an effect of globalization in the West
Payment issues and related demands as products of globalization
Tax havens exploitation due to globalization
Assess the lack of fairness in multinational corporations
Globalized setting and the risk of intellectual property theft
Legal businesses and communities are affected adversely by globalization
How globalization increased competition exponentially and doomed SMEs
Internationalization and limited domestic institution options
The exploitation of labor at the core of globalization-related processes
Healthcare access in developing nations: unexpected effects of globalization
Increased infection spreading in a globalized environment: lessons from COVID-19
When globalization fails: the rise of the fake medications threat
Inefficient resource distribution in global healthcare: current concerns
Inconsistency in healthcare regulations in the globalized setting
Globalization, the rising nurse-patient ratio, and workplace burnout
When globalization hurts public healthcare: private sector expansion
Global interdependence, developing countries, and resource leakage in healthcare
Study the use of globalization to promote the status quo in healthcare
Rising competition and one-company dominance in global healthcare
Interconnected setting as the platform for escalating international conflicts
Assess the prevalence of Western perspectives on politics
Internationalization and leading states’ dominance in global politics
Globalization concerns: the failure to embrace political diversity
Evaluate the challenges of building international policies
Increased external political control as the side effect of globalization
Globalization and the inability to prioritize local citizens’ security
Research the drop in security levels as a result of globalization
Globalized political environment: an increase in surveillance threats
Foreign intelligence intervening as an adverse effect of globalization
Explain how globalization promotes consumerism
Are globalization and Western ideas stifling the intercultural dialogue?
Acculturation and globalization: threats to Indigenous cultures
Globalization and the displacement of local populations
How the globalized environment enforces cultural stereotypes
Development of polarized opinions and the resulting cultural divide
National identity erasure as a result of globalization
Study the causes behind the global increase in mental health issues
Personal space erasure as a consequence of globalization
Focus on consumerism as the main globalization philosophy
Stifled individualism in the era of globalization
Challenges faced by ethnic minorities in the globalized context
Poverty and inequality as increasing concerns associated with globalization
Inequality in global resource distribution: side effects of globalization
Failure of globalization ideas anywhere but the West
The increasing threat of intellectual property theft and copyright infringement
Challenges associated with controlling laws in the globalized context
Evaluate the difficulties in identifying compromises between legal frameworks of different countries
Challenges in developing a homogenous policy for the globalized community
Globalization and the threat to minority needs
Diluted priorities in the globalized environment
Study the issue of control in the global economic context
Legal concerns in the international setting: homogeneity issues
Research the topic of incompatibility of diverse legal frameworks worldwide
Exposure to cybersecurity threats as a result of globalization
Cybercrime increase in the globalized context
Challenges in negotiating legal collaboration in international settings
The threat of terrorist attacks on a global level
Evaluate the difficulties in negotiating legal policies as an effect of globalization
Problems with introducing a unified academic approach within the global context
Challenges adapting diverse educational environments to a uniform framework
Globalization and the difficulties in controlling policies’ implementation
Ethics as a control tool in a globally integrated setting
Problems with challenging power structures within the globalized context
Evaluate the threat of failing to maintain economic concerns on a global level
Difficulties identifying business fraud in an international setting
Globalization and problems negotiating political and cultural differences
Polarization of opinions as an effect of forced globalization

‍🙋 Globalization Topics for Presentation

What makes the Alibaba Corporation a business globalization pioneer?
Smart automation as a feature of Globalization 4.0
Explain how global manufacturing creates jobs in the low-GDP states
Study globalization’s effects on the manufacturing costs of essential goods
Current issues in global geopolitics: increasing non-renewable energy costs
Explore the adverse impact of Westernization on Asian cultures
The history of cross-cultural agility frameworks in retail business
The Millennial generation’s attitudes to globalization: recent trends
The globalization of football in the 20th century
Cultural globalization’s positive and adverse effects on local movie industries
The e-commerce ecosystem’s role in facilitating global trade
Starbucks’s growth as an example of globalization
Globalization’s adverse impacts on small retail businesses
Business globalization’s negative effects on the deforestation issue
Explain how the Internet has enabled globalized manufacturing
The IMF’s stance on economic globalization : past and future
Does the counter-globalization movement rely on empirical evidence?
The early history of global interactions: Silk Road trade
Study the history of the multinational corporation phenomenon
Political globalization: the rise of intergovernmental organizations
How global integration has catalyzed economic development in African countries
The Spice Routes as an early case of globalization
International investment’s role in business globalization
The history of polycentric political networks during the 20 th century
How should the world respond to the “Coca-colonization” trend?
Does globalization promote the exploitation of a cheaper labor force?
How the Scientific Revolution of16 th -17 th centuries promoted global connectivity
The British Empire’s contributions to globalization before the mid-1800s
Intense railway construction as a catalyst of globalized trade
Has globalization destroyed a preference for local products in India ?
Innovative sea transportation technology and global trade in the 1990s
The WTO’s contributions to promoting global e-commerce
Cultural globalization and associated threats, as seen by Generation Z
How global connectivity removes jobs from countries with high production costs
The Greater Arab Free Trade Area’s contributions to international commerce
Does globalization make consumer goods more affordable?
The Great Depression as a hindrance to globalization
What led to the emergence of international sports organizations?
Globalized business as a contributor to ocean acidification
The rise of global governance in the 20 th century
The Cultural Globalization Index: methodology and takeaways
Globalization’s effects on natural resource consumption
20th-century barriers to economic globalization: the case of the Iron Curtain
The invention of intermodal containers and their impact on global trade
How free-trade areas promote globalization in Asia
The USSR’s resistance to globalization
Study the effects of globalization of the football player market
The pros and cons of polycentric networks in global decision-making
Explain how the current trade facilitation agenda supports globalization
Global decision-making and its long-term effects on nation-states
Intergenerational and international differences in attitudes to globalization
Is business globalization destructive to local cultures?
Write about the anti-globalization movement’s arguments against trade liberalization
Can we call free trade a revival of imperialism?
The WTO’s achievements in promoting free trade
The Internet’s role as a catalyst of global connectivity
Globalization’s effects on cross-strait relationships
Review the World Bank’s path to power in the globalization era
Globalization’s impacts on gentrification in the US
Review the key achievements of UN/CEFACT as a facilitator of global trade
What characterizes cultural interactions before the 1500s?
Religion’s role in the development of globalization
Will globalization promote the cosmopolitan democracy theory?
Cable technology as a facilitator of global trade
Cuisine and culture-related globalization: the case of McDonald’s
How the IMF promotes globalization in the 21 st century
Globalization’s reverberations on consumers’ purchasing behavior
How does globalization advance women’s rights in developing economies?

🗺️ Globalization Essay Topics: Different Categories

Globalization topics for high school.

The world’s interconnectedness and the processes of globalization
The impact of globalization on culture and economy
Globalization: confronting threats and opportunities for countries
Globalization in the modern world: pros and cons
How the global community is addressing the challenges of globalization
The Internet ’s role in worldwide integration and unification
Study the central philosophical and ethical aspects of globalization
How does the globalization of the world economy manifest itself?
COVID-19 against the background of globalization

Globalization manifests itself in economic integration, cultural exchange, etc.

How did the process of globalization change European countries?
The leading causes for cultural diffusion in prehistoric times
Globalization during the Industrial Revolution
The role of the English language in global cooperation
Analyze the central idea behind globalization
Is globalization a cure-all for economic challenges?
When did globalization really begin?
Human rights in the era of cross-border interactions
How does modern-day globalization differ from that during previous centuries?
How does globalization relate to Americans’ public life?
What are the worst long-term consequences of globalization ?
What can be called globalization , and what can’t?
The continued existence of separate nation-states considering globalization
Relationship between globalization and healthcare
Ideological approaches to the concept of globalization
Is globalization a generally positive or negative phenomenon?
The impact of globalization on the formation of identity
Can the era of global integration ever come to an end?
What will eventually replace globalization , and what will become of humanity in this case?
How does globalization affect young people?
Does globalization solve global problems?
Globalization of higher education: contradictions and innovations
Study the main technological factors of globalization
Global connectivity as the leading trend in world development
Human society: from isolation to international collaboration
Social isolation and loneliness in the era of global communication
Sustainable globalization for the benefit of all populations
Analyze controversial statements about internationalization
Globalization and religion: what are the concerns?
Economic interdependence as the removal of barriers to free trade
Globalization and the problem of income inequality
Who introduced the concept of globalization?
Evaluate English as the language of diplomacy, business, and the Internet
The information revolution caused by globalization
Terrorism as one of the biggest obstacles to global collaboration
The US and European states as the proponents of globalization
Is the opposition to globalization political in nature?
Global integration as the root cause of humanity’s gravest problems
Functioning of society in the era of worldwide interconnectivity
Research the dangers globalization poses to the world economy
The main contradictions and conflicts of the internationalization process
Globalization as a sociocultural process
Study the social benefits of globalization
How does globalization affect people’s purchasing behaviors?
Global integration and its philosophical problems
Globalization, human rights and laws: interconnection and interdependence
Does globalization concern every person on Earth?
Globalization and mass culture : trends and influences

Current Global Issues Topics for Students

The War in Ukraine and the global food crisis
Review the correlation between global warming and sea level rise
Global greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric impact
Advancing human rights globally: Qatar World Cup case study
Global water shortage and contamination: solutions to depletion
Global energy crisis and the Israel-Palestine conflict
What are preventative solutions to global water shortage?
The role of poverty on child labor around the world
How can we stop the global issue of child labor in the fashion industry ?
Access to education and resources as a solution to the global child labor issue
Accountability of multinational corporations for child labor use
What is the correlation between child labor and global Islamic extremism?
Global violence and discrimination against women and LGBTQ+ members
Evaluate the role of social media in preventing global violence
Global violence and human trafficking
Military interventions to address global violence
Analysis of effectiveness in current approaches to global violence prevention
Evaluate the international poverty line and its implications
Global poverty and food crisis
Address the lack of food and shelter caused by the rise in global poverty
Effectiveness of homeless shelters to address global poverty
International poverty factors and causes of variation in wages
Current international initiatives in addressing global poverty
Study global wealth in relation to income inequality
Global inequality in health and healthcare
International stability, development, and global inequality
Global inequality in social relationships
Health disparities as predictors of global inequalities
Global wealth inequality: crime and violence manifestations
Global terrorism and Islamic extremism
Prevention of terrorism with military interventions
Global radicalization and immigration issues
The role of international networking in recruitment in terrorist organizations
Conduct a geopolitical analysis of ISIS as a global terrorist organization
Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism: what are the implications?
Global terrorism and geopolitical power vacuums
Global practice of child marriages : insights from Afghanistan
Legislative solutions to child marriage practice
Evaluate current international initiatives to address child marriage
The role of cultural isolation in child marriage practices
Study the global correlation between inequality and food
Global population increase and the impending food crisis
Agricultural solutions for global food shortage : technologies and fertilizers
Global supply chain vulnerability assessment
AIDS prevention: effective means to address the epidemic
Research the effects of climate change on global air pollution
The correlation between global warming and fossil fuels
Assess the impact of electric vehicles on climate change
The effect of the carbon footprint of animal agriculture on global warming
Global warming as a threat to food production
Analyze the climate change’s impact on the shift in weather patterns
Global temperature increase and agricultural output
Continental evaluation of climate change and biodiversity
Extreme heat waves in the Global South: climate change implications
The effectiveness of the UN initiatives to promote human rights
Evaluate the UN initiatives on clean water access
Technological solutions for global hunger and malnourishment
Marine plastic pollution and its effect on human reproductive health

Topics Related to Globalization & Global Economy

Research the history and evolution of globalization
How will jobs change in the context of a globalized economy?
How does globalization impact economic development?
What is the role of multinational corporations in the global economy ?
What is the effect of increased financial inclusion on the worldwide economy?
The Eurozone crisis and its implications for the global economy
How do global capital markets influence the national economy?
Compare the benefits and drawbacks of worldwide free trade
International Aid and its role in alleviating global poverty crisis
How does global networking affect labor markets?
Do international organizations contribute to shaping global economic policy ?
The role of technology in driving economic interdependence
How does globalization impact small businesses ?
The issue of modern trade wars and protectionism
Study the relationship between globalization and economic inequality
How does global climate change affect nations’ financial well-being?
The role of immigration in the global economy
The relationship between globalization, economy, and national sovereignty
Is education important for the global economy?
How do digital technologies transform the global economy?
Can a global financial system shape globalization?
Why is energy consumption increasing?
How do exchange rate dynamics affect the worldwide economy?
Old age pensions as a social welfare policy affected by globalization
What is the role of international trade in driving globalization?
How does globalization increase international investing?
Why is the crisis in the housing market a result of globalization?
Has globalization increased the risk of corruption ?
The role of transportation and logistics in globalization
Suggest strategies for sustainable development of global economies
Analyze China’s global economic initiative
Does the tourism industry benefit from globalization?
The role of international taxation in shaping globalization
Is globalization beneficial for the education sector?
Globalization as a cause of social mobility
The role of international monetary policy in driving globalization
Are international relations connected to globalization?
Benefits of globalization of financial markets
The impact of globalization on the fashion industry
Does globalization increase medical access?
What is the role of global governance in driving globalization?
Positive and negative effects of media globalization
Why are global trade agreements vital for globalization?
How does globalization impact the tourism industry ?
Does globalization contribute to poverty rates?
The role of international migration in driving globalization
What is the impact of globalization on the transportation sector?
Compare and contrast globalization vs. urbanization
How are international institutions shaping globalization ?
Does globalization negatively affect the energy sector ?
What is the importance of international organizations in driving globalization?
How can we prevent the negative effect of globalization on the housing market?
What does globalization mean in international relations?

Essay Questions about Globalization

How does the War in Ukraine affect globalization?
What is the role of the Middle East countries in global collaboration?
Is globalization dependent on global supply chain networks?
Are there ways to address nationalization through globalization?
How does the rise of dictatorships affect global cooperation?
What is the impact of globalization on local cultures?
Did globalization bring improvements to poorer African countries?
Has globalization already reached its end?
Are there any disadvantages of globalization for rich nations?
How will the development of AI affect global networking?
Did globalization rates increase or decrease during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Who will lead globalization by 2030?
What is the 4th Industrial Revolution’s impact on globalization?
What were the major phases of globalization?
Did Globalization 4.0 end in the 2010s?
Will globalization create international equality?
Did the global integration process start with silk and spices?
What are the disadvantages of globalization for poor nations?
How did the global pandemic affect cross-border interactions?
What are the benefits of globalization?
Has China become the centerpiece of globalization?
How is the global food crisis affecting economic interdependence?
How is the Russian government halting globalization?
What are the key drivers of universal connectivity?
Does economic interdependence improve trade efficiency?
What characterizes the first wave of globalization?
How is the global energy crisis affecting internationalization?
Is globalization vulnerable to human rights violations ?
How will water shortage impact the international community?
Is democracy a prerequisite for globalization?
What role did Great Britain play in globalization?
What was the role of Islam in globalization?
Can worldwide collaboration solve the issues of global hunger and poverty?
Does globalization need capitalism and free markets to function?
What is the impact of globalization on the US?
How did globalization lead to the development of modern China?
How does globalization affect greenhouse gas emissions?
Is globalization possible without cultural elements?
How can we find a balance between globalization and cultural heritage?
Is the rising nationalism a response to globalization?
Can globalization alleviate health disparities between nations?
Does worldwide collaboration centralize international power?
Does globalization only benefit the powerful nations?
How did COVID-19 expose globalization vulnerabilities?
Are cryptocurrencies part of Globalization 4.0?
Is globalization possible without military interventions?
What is the role of oil in globalization processes?
Is global terrorism a byproduct of global interconnection?
What is the possible future direction of globalization?
How can we balance national autonomy with global collaboration?
What is the end goal of globalization?
Can globalization proceed without liberal democracies ?
How did globalization shape the current geopolitics?
Will the Russia-Ukraine war permanently stop internationalization?
What is the role of OPEC in globalization?
Is Davos culture undermining global cooperation?
Is glocalization a new form of globalization?
What is the functionalist perspective of global interdependence?
What are the benefits and issues of cultural globalization?

🗣️ Globalization Topics for a Discussion

How does globalization strengthen totalitarian ideologies?
How does globalization affect developing countries?
The connection between globalization and human trafficking
How does globalization contribute to homogenization?
The impact of globalization on the demand for autonomy
Diversity as a consequence of globalization
The importance of cultural diversity in globalization
Research the struggle for resources in the context of internationalization

List of negative effects of globalization.

Is total globalization inevitable in the future?
Contribution of globalization to the field of advertising
Discuss controversies associated with contemporary globalization
Study the attitudes towards globalization in postmodern societies
Transformation of the world system in the process of globalization
The emergence of multinationals as a consequence of globalization
How globalization reflects in the global exchange of goods
How has the global market changed during globalization?
Mutual dependencies of countries due to globalization
Transcommunication as a product of globalization
Review the favorable conditions necessary for the globalization of the economy
Featherstone’s views on localization related to globalization
Localization in the works of Friedman, Giddens, and Hannerz
What dangers does globalization pose to ethnicities?
Is globalization possible without the phenomenon of localization?
How does time-space compression contribute to localization?
Global and local contributors to the fragmentation of society
What measures can stop the fragmentation of society?
Does globalization cause local formulations?
The contribution of globalization to Japan’s bubble economy development
Differences in globalization between developed and developing countries
Links between the universal and the particular in globalization
Expansion of internationalization in Asia and Africa
Is globalization a threat to hegemony in economics and culture?
How can we prevent the US from subordinating other countries?
Does global interdependence threaten the extinction of grassroots culture?
Does worldwide connectivity contribute to the unification of the social order ?
How is society changing within the framework of global integration?
The development of anti-modernist ideology under globalization
Modernization of health care in globalization
How does globalization impede the availability of health services?
How developing states suffer from globalization
Does globalization mean the end of the nation-state?
Perceptions of the consequences of globalization in contemporary society
Marginalization as an effect of internationalization
Frans J. Schuurman’s research on globalization
Why is globalization associated with the end of development?
The role of privatization in the process of globalization
The crisis of sociological theories in globalization

🤔 Globalization Essay Prompts

Globalization and climate change essay prompt.

How globalization affects carbon footprint. Study the consequences of interconnected global economy on carbon emissions. Pay particular attention to the effects of trade and transportation on CO2 levels.
Globalization and environmental justice. In your essay, answer the questions: how does globalization worsen environmental inequality? Which regions suffer from the effects of climate change the most?
Local initiatives to address climate change. Explore what environmentally-conscious people do to stop climate change in their regions. How do their actions contribute to worldwide efforts.

What Is Globalization Essay Prompt

The early history of globalization. You can cover what factors led to worldwide connectivity and how it has grown ever since. Your essay may talk about the Silk Road, the spread of Islam, and global trade. 
The impact of globalization on modern society. Globalization has numerous benefits for the economy and business. You might explore what difference it has made for everyday people. 
The characteristics of globalization. Analyze what defines globalization. Cover not only the basic features but also more specific ones, such as global product standardization.

Is Globalization Good or Bad: Essay Prompt

Globalization is good because it contributes to cultural awareness. Explore how it can strengthen the ties between countries, build cultural bridges, and improve the quality of people’s lives. 
Ways in which developing countries benefit from globalization. For example, thanks to globalization, resources such as technology and education were brought to developing countries. 
Downsides of globalization: unemployment rate. Due to technological advancements, many people in developing countries are left unemployed. Explain how globalization also plays a significant role in this process. 
Globalization’s negative influence on cultural diversity. This is one of the most dangerous threats in the globalized world. How can we prevent the extinction of Indigenous cultures and promote their uniqueness?

Impact of Globalization on Culture Essay Prompt

Globalization contributes to the spread of racial stereotypes. Despite America’s ongoing attempts to overcome prejudice, the media still spreads the stereotypical image of non-white races. You can focus on specific examples of such stereotypes in your essay. 
Westernization of cultures. Western pop icons, brands, and lifestyles are spreading worldwide. What contributed to Western culture’s domination? What makes this influence harmful?
How globalization promotes the flow of cultural practices. In your essay, discuss how globalization may lead to more efficient management of international organizations.

How Did Covid-19 Affect Globalization Essay Prompt

The mechanisms of the COVID-19 effect on globalization strategies. These include consumers’ attitudes, the government’s actions, business’ globalization economics, and the mindsets of stakeholders and executives of multinational companies. 
The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy. Your essay can touch on the change in capital input, labor market developments, and productivity growth. 
Globalization’s forecasts after the pandemic. Analyze the post-pandemic prospects in your essay. Focus on how different it will be compared to past flow patterns.

✏️ Globalization Essay: How to Write

Coming up with a topic is just the first step. After that, you need to make an outline and write your essay. Not sure how to go about it? Check out the handy guide below. 

Globalization Essay Introduction

At the beginning of your essay, there’s always an introduction. It includes three main components: 

Hook . Start with an intriguing piece of information that makes your audience interested in reading your text. You can cite some shocking statistics or tell a little-known fact.  Only 1 of 7 billion people on the planet live in comfortable conditions. 
Background information. The next 1-3 sentences need to contain the necessary info about the topic the readers need to know before continuing with your paper.  It may seem like a small number, but it is enormous compared to the situation humanity faced 100 years ago. The world per capita GDP skyrocketed from $680 to $6,500 during this period. 
After that, you write the thesis statement. Keep reading to learn what it is!

Globalization Thesis Statement

The thesis statement is the key sentence of your essay. It serves several purposes: 

Structuring your whole work.
Setting your main ideas. 
Creating some room for discussion.

The thesis also needs to be coherent and brief but not too short. Make sure to include all of your essay’s critical ideas into it.

Here’s an example:

Although it has some disadvantages, globalization is crucial for increasing the number of people living in comfort by creating comparable living conditions.

Globalization Essay Body

The body is the central part of your paper. These are usually 2-3 paragraphs, each explaining one of your points.

To build a solid body paragraph, you need to: 

Present the segment’s main idea in a topic sentence . 
Expand on it. 
Use evidence to prove your point.

Here’s a sample body paragraph for you:

One of globalization’s most prominent positive effects is its effect on people’s living conditions. For most of human history, comparing one person’s salary or social status to those of people living on another continent was impossible. Such personal information was not available to the public. However, with the rise of globalization, people started learning more and more about those living abroad. Citizens of countries with poor living conditions discovered that their lives could be much better. This discovery forced some governments to improve their citizens’ state of being by using rich foreign countries as an example. 

Globalization Essay Conclusion

The conclusion is the final part of your work. Nothing new needs to be added here. Just restate your thesis , summarize your body paragraphs, and finish with a memorable statement.

At the end of the day, people’s lives have improved significantly over the last two centuries. Much of these improvements are thanks to globalization. These positive changes suggest that it is possible to further enhance people’s quality of life through global collaboration. 

You can also use our free essay conclusion generator to save time.

And with that, we end our topic list. Make sure to let us know which topic you like best. Feel free to recommend this article to your friends, and good luck with your assignment!

Articles on Globalization

Displaying 1 - 20 of 66 articles.

Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este: Efforts to force a busy informal commercial hub to follow global trade rules have only made life harder for those eking out a living

Jennifer L. Tucker , University of New Mexico

Fast fashion still comes with deadly risks, 10 years after the Rana Plaza disaster – the industry’s many moving pieces make it easy to cut corners

Ravi Anupindi , University of Michigan

Ahead of the game or falling behind? Canada’s readiness for a borderless, global workforce

Sunil Johal , University of Toronto

China now publishes more high-quality science than any other nation – should the US be worried?

Caroline Wagner , The Ohio State University

Fed keeps focus on US economy as the world tilts toward a recession that it may be contributing to

D. Brian Blank , Mississippi State University

Inflation is spiking around the world – not just in the United States

Christopher Decker , University of Nebraska Omaha

Climate change is now on the menu at seafood restaurants

William W. L. Cheung , University of British Columbia

Critical race theory and feminism are not taking over our universities

Maïka Sondarjee , L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Global shortage of shipping containers highlights their importance in getting goods to Amazon warehouses, store shelves and your door in time for Christmas

Anna Nagurney , UMass Amherst

COVID-19 has shone a light on how globalization can tackle inequality

Sylvanus Kwaku Afesorgbor , University of Guelph ; Binyam Afewerk Demena , International Institute of Social Studies , and Peter A.G. van Bergeijk , International Institute of Social Studies

If China’s middle class continues to thrive and grow, what will it mean for the rest of the world?

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal , Rochester Institute of Technology

Netflix’s big bet on foreign content and international viewers could upend the global mediascape – and change how people see the world

Paolo Sigismondi , USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

Today’s global economy runs on standardized shipping containers, as the Ever Given fiasco illustrates

Young Republicans split from Trump and GOP elders on US foreign policy: 3 charts

Jonathan Schulman , Northwestern University

I spoke to 99 big thinkers about what our ‘world after coronavirus’ might look like – this is what I learned

Adil Najam , Boston University

COVID-19 face masks represent a chance to restore Canadian manufacturing

P. Ravi Selvaganapathy , McMaster University

Populism erupts when people feel disconnected and disrespected

Noam Gidron , Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Peter A. Hall , Harvard University

What’s the gold standard, and why does the US benefit from a dollar that isn’t tied to the value of a glittery hunk of metal?

Michael Klein , Tufts University

From Trump to Trudeau, the escalator is a favorite symbol of political campaigns

Peter Erickson , Colorado State University

International trade has cost Americans millions of jobs. Investing in communities might offset those losses

Top contributors

Distinguished Professor, Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics, & Interim Head, Department of Sustainability, Rochester Institute of Technology

Associate Professor of Agri-Food Trade and Policy, University of Guelph

Professor and Eugene M. Isenberg Chair in Integrative Studies, UMass Amherst

Assistant Professor of Development Economics, International Institute of Social Studies

Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Distinguished Professor of Management & Global Business, Rutgers University

Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - Newark

Professor of International Relations, Boston University

Associate Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University

Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

Assistant Professor of Politics and Policy Studies, Elon University

Professeur d’économie, Mines Paris - PSL

Subject Leader in Film and Media, Bath Spa University

Professor of Computer Science, Rice University

Assistant Professor of International Education, Graduate School of Education and Human Development, George Washington University

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115 Global Issues Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best global issues topic ideas & essay examples, ✍️ global issues essay topics for college, 📌 good essay topics on global issues, 💡 interesting topics to write about global issues, ❓ global issues questions.

Water Scarcity as a Global Issue: Causes and Solutions Common causes of water scarcity include overpopulation e in regions that have limited water resources, global warming, destruction of water catchment areas by human activities, and pollution of water sources.
Homelessness as a Global Social Issue In the US, homelessness is on the increase because of economic melt- down and foreclosures. Moreover, differences in perception of homelessness by liberal and conservative on homeless have increased homelessness in the US.
Anthropology in Solving Global Social Issues Artists were moving in the same direction, which excluded the possibility to understand and assess other examples of the art of other nations.
Tuberculosis as a Global Health Issue Over the years, the bacteria strain that causes tuberculosis has developed a lot of resistance mainly as a result of a lack of compliance to treatment on the part of the patient.
The Great Global Warming Swindle: Different Views on the Issue According to the film, the main aim of the scientific organizations is to get funding for the research of this problem and attract additional attention to global warming, while in reality, the climate is changing […]
Reflection on Global Issues: Globalization of the Environment The global conflicts, managing the post-pandemic world, and the need to navigate the social injustices to ensure equality for all are among the most pressing ones.
Gender Inequality as a Global Issue This essay will examine some of the causes that affect the gap in the treatment of men and women, and its ramifications, particularly regarding developing countries.
Global Issues, Common Good, and Individualism In such a case, the cohesion and commitment of each individual to shared goals and interests seem to solve the mentioned problems.
Global Health Issue of Malaria It can be explained due to the higher density of the population in those areas and the low socioeconomic status of most people.
Project Cost Management: Global Issues and Challenges The information revealed by the author is likely to be beneficial for those individuals who are occupied in various fields but provide cost management services in the framework of the global construction industry.
Global Issues: Addressing an Aging Population An important issue that is currently facing the world community is aging due to the increasing number of older people. Migration leaves the countries in which people are moving with a significant number of older […]
Global Health Issues Affecting International Community The HIV and tuberculosis pandemics have caused and will continue to present considerable challenges to emerging nations’ public health care systems, especially in the hardest-hit nations.
Global Inequality Issues in Modern Society It was evident during the times of colonization when foreign entities tried to impose their sociopolitical and economic institutions on the developing nations.
Global Issues, Climate Justice, and Human Overpopulation On the one hand, globalization has many positive aspects: the mutual enrichment of the world community, the exchange of best practices, and the availability of goods.
Sustainability as an Urgent Global Issue Therefore, this shows the importance of integrating technology with other multidisciplinary teams to achieve quick and sustainable designs that can help in solving the urgent global issue.
Global Issues: Politics, Economics, and Culture by R.Payne The next chapter 14 reveals the issue of cultural homogenization and hybridization due to globalization. From the perspective of the biblical worldview, it largely determines the principles of the world.
Global Ecological Issues of Covid-19 Pandemic The reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is due to the removal of cars on the streets, which account for about 23% of total CO2 emissions.
Environmental and Global Health Issues: Measles Measles is among the most contagious disease in the world and is highly frequent and densely distributed in poor developing nations of Africa and Asia.
Solving Global Issues May Not Be as Easy as It Seems The main point of the essay is to demonstrate how the inaction of those with power and money in the face of human suffering is purely immoral.
Global Health Issue: The Coronavirus Disease Families have suffered unparalleled grief, anxiety, and distress from the increasing fatality, massive job losses, lockdowns, and movement restrictions to curb the spread of the virus.
WHO and Its Impact on Global Health Issues The issues which are the center of attention of the World Health Organization are: Women’s Health Health In Africa Eradication of communicable diseases Dr Margaret Chan, the Director-General of World Health Organization said;”I want my […]
Examination of a Global Population Issue of Russia The country is one of the richest in the world. The country also has the largest forest cover in the world, and the largest fresh water lake.
Global Health Concerns Overview Title Report 1. Japan nuke risks are minimal The World Health Organization has sent alerts to global health experts to travel to Japan to prevent health hazards caused by radiation. WHO reported the health risks arising from the incident is very low and the current radiation level has no great risk on public health. In […]
Global Issues Action Plan in the U.S. While drawbacks are the possibility of losing power that other states can use to influence the United States and the lack of protection from emerging military organizations and countries, such as China and Iran, that […]
Global Health Issue Analysis: HIV – A Relatively New Disease Rapid detection and treatment are crucial to limit the spread of HIV and limit the patient’s effects. As the frequency and intensity of symptoms vary from person to person, testing is the only clear way […]
Race as a Global Issue in the 1920s The main intention of prohibiting immigrants from entering the country was to block the Germans whom the Americans saw as a threat to their country.
Global Digital Divide as a Social Issue That is, if societies around the globe are able to bridge the gap between those who have and those who do not in relation to information technology, then the development problems would be minimized at […]
Global Issue: WWF on Bio-Refineries NGO’s and private communities provide most of the funds, along with the government, for the development of these integrated bio-refineries. Integrated bio-refineries come with the promise of a better lifestyle and enhanced working conditions for […]
Global Warming Issues Review and Environmental Sustainability Whether it is the melt down of Arctic ice, the damage of the Ozone layer, extra pollution in developing countries; all sums up to one thing in common and that is global warming.
Modern Global Issues: Drinking Water Shortage The situation is closely linked with the lack of water, and the offered technology to cope with this problem. This is the only way to use naturally filtered and sprang water.
How Has Globalization Impacted on Issues of Human Rights? William Adler closely examines the disrupted lives of the three women who occupy an assembly-line job as the job and its company moves from New Jersey to rural Mississippi and to Matamoros, Mexico, across the […]
Global Health Issue in the “Mother Teresa” Movie The movie is devoted to her immense donation to the universal HIV/AIDS struggle in India, but along with the help to HIV infected people, she made the greatest ever contribution to the matters of peace […]
Malnutrition in Children as a Global Health Issue The peculiarity of this initiative is not to support children and control their feeding processes but prevent pediatric malnutrition even before a child is born.
Adolescent Pregnancy as a Global Issue The wider the information system is, the more effective methods of solving problems related to the health of pregnant teens are.
The Doha Round Effectiveness in Solving Global Issues Except for the Dispute Settlement Understanding actions, the attendees of the conference agreed that the outcome of all negotiations was to be done as a single undertaking.
Cultural Competence in Action: Solutions to Global Health Issues In this paper, the analysis of several case studies about cultural competence will be discussed to clarify how to achieve positive results and reduce the wasting of resources. In the second case, certain attention is […]
Polar Transformations as a Global Warming Issue Changes in vegetation due to global warming will be varying as the regions are covered with three main vegetation types: polar desert, boreal forest, and the tundra.
Project Cost Management’s Global Issues and Challenges The results suggest the lack of identity for the profession on the global scale due to the lack of consensus regarding the common descriptor, the scarcity of common standards, terminology, and bodies of knowledge, and […]
Natural Disasters and Global Social Issues The hurricane led to a major shift in the social arrangement of the populations in the worst affected areas. This led to a significant loss of jobs in the affected areas.
Childhood Obesity in Developing Countries – A Global Health Issue Childhood Obesity and the Globe As mentioned earlier, according to the data of WHO, the number of obese children in the world today is more than 42 million, and the vast majority of them are […]
Differing Views on Global Warming Issues It is crucial to bring on board the views of those who view global warming as a myth that need not to be addressed.
Ethics-Related Global Workplace Issues Child labor also exposes the children to activities that are illegal. Forced labor is a form of slavery and should not be practiced anywhere in the world.
Examination of a Global Population Issue Economic Issues The economy of South Africa is one of the fastest developing economies in the world. Being the only African country which is a member of the G-20, this country has been seen to […]
Global Population Issues and Population in the UAE The natural resources will face exhaustion due to the great pressure of the population. Consequently, the governments of these countries will be forced to take measures to drive the fertility rates up to cover up […]
Global Issues for Global Citizens: An Introduction to Key Development Challenges
Are Gender Rights and Gender Discrimination Global Issues
Global Issues Regarding the Container Shipping
Analysis of the Global Issues in Business
Global Issues, Local Solutions: Rethinking Wealth and Health
Climate Change and Pollution Are Serious Global Issues
Compounded Global Issues: Terrorism, Nuclear Proliferation, and Climate Change
Global Issues: Obesity, Inactivity, and Water-Crisis
Environment-Related Global Issues: Global and Regional Conventions
How Global Issues Are Resolved With the Scopes of Many Disciplines
Explaining the Global Issues of Environment and Health
Global Crimes Cause Global Issues That Affect the National
The Alarming and Troublesome Global Warming Issue
Analyzing How Global Issues Affect Tourism
The Link Between Global Issues and Change in Human Resource Management
The Relations Between the Global Issues and Institutions
Global Issues Surrounding the Millennium Development Goals
Analyzing Human Trafficking as a Global Issue
Global Warming: An Issue That Is Man-Made?
Immigration and Migration Described as the Global Issues
Analyzing Global Issues That Effect Everyone
Environmental Issues: Chevron’s Contribution to Global Warming
Global Issues We Are Facing Today
Cigarette Smoking Relation to Global Issues of the Future
Six Global Issues Associated With E-Commerce
Global Issues: The Link Between Water Shortage and Child Mortality
Analysis of the Innovation and Global Issues in Social Sciences
The Relationships Between Internet, Computers, and Global Issues
Global Issues Within the First Civilizations
Legal and Global Issues Focused On Treating Undocumented Immigrants
Analysis of the Poor News Coverage and Public Opinion on Global Issues
Depicting Social and Global Issues and Trends in Adult Education
The Global Issues Depicted in “Home”, a Documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Teaching for Sustainable Development Through Ethical Global Issues Pedagogy
Terrorism and the Military: Global Issues of Today
The Concept, Content, and Nature of Contemporary Global Issues
The Gay Marriage Debate: Contemporary Global Issues
The Analysis of the Global Issues and Threats of Nuclear Weapons
Overview of the Significant Global Issues of Nowadays
The Part of the U.S. and India in Global Issues On Women
Are Gender Rights and Gender Discrimination Global Issues?
What Are the Global Issues in Business?
Are Climate Change and Pollution Serious Global Issues?
Are Terrorism and Nuclear Proliferation Global Issues?
What Is the Role of Third World Countries in Global Environmental Issues?
How Are Global Issues Solved With the Help of Many Disciplines?
What Are the Social and Global Issues and Trends in Adult Education?
What Institutions Can Solve Global Issues?
What Are the Global Issues of Immigration and Migration?
Do Global Issues Have Local Solutions?
How Global Is the Issue of Obesity?
What Are the Global Issues Related to Container Transportation?
Is Child Mortality a Global Issue?
What Are the Global Issues Associated With the Millennium Development Goals?
What Were the Global Issues of the First Civilizations?
What Global Issues Is Humanity Currently Facing?
What Are the Global Issues Related to Human Resource Management?
What Does Smoking Have to Do With Global Issues of the Future?
How Do Global Issues Affect Individual States?
What Is Public Opinion About Global Issues?
What Are the Concepts, Meaning and Nature of Modern Global Issues?
Gay Marriage: Is It a Modern Global Issue?
What Are the US and India Global Issues Affecting Women?
Global Issues: How to Fight Addiction to Video Games?
What Are the Global Health Issues?
Is Organized Crime a Global Issue in the World?
How Can National Governments Solve the Global Issue of Climate Change?
What Are Starbucks Global Issues?
Why Is Global Cooperation Important to Address the Global Issues of Postharvest Losses?
Is It Possible to Solve the Global Issue of PTSD?
Environment Research Topics
Gender Inequality Research Topics
Human Rights Essay Ideas
National Parks Research Topics
Overpopulation Topics
Nuclear Energy Essay Titles
Poverty Essay Titles
Racism Paper Topics
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Globalization Topics for Research Papers

Chelsea baldwin.

Debate may arise when people discuss the exact definition of the word "globalization." Some say that globalization is a general integration of culture and politics through business, while others argue that it's characterized by developed nations taking advantage of cheap labor to generate higher profits. One thing that almost everyone agrees on, though, is that globalization is happening and that it is bringing world economies closer together. Because globalization is such a powerful force, finding a focused topic for a research paper on the subject will not be difficult if you take time to seriously consider and narrow down what you could write about.

Explore this article

Outsourcing Trends
History and Beginnings
A Specific Market or Industry
Recent Domestic Effects

1 Outsourcing Trends

One of the biggest driving forces behind globalization is outsourcing, or relocating manufacturing, production or distribution duties to other countries. Many large corporations outsource responsibilities to save money on the development of their products. Typically, outsourcing results in jobs moving to countries that report lower average rates of pay. India is an example of a country that has received many outsourced jobs. In your research paper on globalization, focus on past trends in outsourcing and speculate on what they mean for the future.

2 History and Beginnings

Although technology has certainly expedited the ability to globalize different companies and corporations, international trade exchanges have occurred for thousands of years. For example, in the Middle Ages, the Silk Road was a main trade route that connected China with Europe. In your research paper on globalization, you can study the ancient development of globalization or how it advanced with technology in the modern age.

3 A Specific Market or Industry

Globalization is different for each market and each industry, in terms of key players, motivations, logistics and other factors. For example, globalization of the furniture industry might look different from globalization of the fashion industry. Pick one industry or specific market for a type of product, and study the causes and effects of globalization that relate to it. In addition, you could use your research paper on globalization as a way to investigate what international operations mean for companies, employees and consumers.

4 Recent Domestic Effects

Write a research paper on the domestic effects of globalization in the last year or two. For example, research U.S. groups who are either for or against globalization. Argue how the effort to buy only products made in the U.S. is either hurting or helping the economy. In addition, you could investigate how many U.S.-based companies maintain global operations, and how outsourcing has affected consumer cost in their industries.

1 Entreprenuer: 5 Out-of-the-Ordinary Outsourcing Trends
2 Stanford Encylcopedia of Philosophy: Globalization
3 Globalization101: What is Globalization?

About the Author

Chelsea Baldwin began writing professionally for local newspapers in 2008. She has published articles in “High Country Press” and “Kernersville News.” She also produced newsletters for a local chapter of AIESEC, a global nonprofit organization. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from Appalachian State University.

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Trade and Globalization

How did international trade and globalization change over time? What is the structure today? And what is its impact?

By: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina , Diana Beltekian and Max Roser

This page was first published in 2014 and last revised in April 2024.

On this topic page, you can find data, visualizations, and research on historical and current patterns of international trade, as well as discussions of their origins and effects.

Other research and writing on trade and globalization on Our World in Data:

Is globalization an engine of economic development?
Is trade a major driver of income inequality?

Economic Growth

See all our data, visualizations, and writing on economic growth.

Economic Inequality

See all our data, visualizations, and writing on economic inequality.

See all our data, visualizations, and writing on migration.

See all interactive charts on Trade and Globalization ↓

Trade has changed the world economy

Trade has grown remarkably over the last century.

One of the most important developments of the last century has been the integration of national economies into a global economic system. This process of integration, often called globalization, has resulted in a remarkable growth in trade between countries.

The chart here shows the growth of world exports over more than the last two centuries. These estimates are in constant prices (i.e. have been adjusted to account for inflation) and are indexed at 1913 values.

The chart shows an extraordinary growth in international trade over the last couple of centuries: Exports today are more than 40 times larger than in 1913.

You can switch to a logarithmic scale under ‘Settings’. This will help you see that, over the long run, growth has roughly followed an exponential path.

The increase in trade has even outpaced economic growth

The chart above shows how much more trade we have today relative to a century ago. But what about trade relative to total economic output?

Over the last couple of centuries the world economy has experienced sustained positive economic growth , so looking at changes in trade relative to GDP offers another interesting perspective.

The next chart plots the value of traded goods relative to GDP (i.e. the value of merchandise trade as a share of global economic output).

Up to 1870, the sum of worldwide exports accounted for less than 10% of global output. Today, the value of exported goods around the world is around 25%. This shows that over the last hundred years, the growth in trade has even outpaced rapid economic growth.

Trade expanded in two waves

The first "wave of globalization" started in the 19th century, the second one after ww2.

The following visualization presents a compilation of available trade estimates, showing the evolution of world exports and imports as a share of global economic output .

This metric (the ratio of total trade, exports plus imports, to global GDP) is known as the “openness index”. The higher the index, the higher the influence of trade transactions on global economic activity. 1

As we can see, until 1800 there was a long period characterized by persistently low international trade – globally the index never exceeded 10% before 1800. This then changed over the course of the 19th century, when technological advances triggered a period of marked growth in world trade – the so-called “first wave of globalization”.

This first wave came to an end with the beginning of World War I, when the decline of liberalism and the rise of nationalism led to a slump in international trade. In the chart we see a large drop in the interwar period.

After World War II trade started growing again. This new – and ongoing – wave of globalization has seen international trade grow faster than ever before. Today the sum of exports and imports across nations amounts to more than 50% of the value of total global output. 2

Before the first wave of globalization, trade was driven mostly by colonialism

Over the early modern period, transoceanic flows of goods between empires and colonies accounted for an important part of international trade. The following visualizations provide a comparison of intercontinental trade, in per capita terms, for different countries.

As we can see, intercontinental trade was very dynamic, with volumes varying considerably across time and from empire to empire.

Leonor Freire Costa, Nuno Palma, and Jaime Reis, who compiled and published the original data shown here, argue that trade, also in this period, had a substantial positive impact on the economy. 3

The first wave of globalization was marked by the rise and collapse of intra-European trade

The following visualization shows a detailed overview of Western European exports by destination. Figures correspond to export-to-GDP ratios (i.e. the sum of the value of exports from all Western European countries, divided by the total GDP in this region). You can use “Settings” to switch to a relative view and see the proportional contribution of each region to total Western European exports.

This chart shows that growth in Western European trade throughout the 19th century was largely driven by trade within the region: In the period 1830-1900 intra-European exports went from 1% of GDP to 10% of GDP, and this meant that the relative weight of intra-European exports doubled over the period. However, this process of European integration then collapsed sharply in the interwar period.

After the Second World War trade within Europe rebounded, and from the 1990s onwards exceeded the highest levels of the first wave of globalization. In addition, Western Europe then started to increasingly trade with Asia, the Americas, and to a smaller extent Africa and Oceania.

The next graph, using data from Broadberry and O'Rourke (2010) 4 , shows another perspective on the integration of the global economy and plots the evolution of three indicators measuring integration across different markets – specifically goods, labor, and capital markets.

The indicators in this chart are indexed, so they show changes relative to the levels of integration observed in 1900. This gives us another perspective on how quickly global integration collapsed with the two World Wars. 5

Migration, Financial integration, and Trade openness from 1880–1996

The second wave of globalization was enabled by technology

The worldwide expansion of trade after the Second World War was largely possible because of reductions in transaction costs stemming from technological advances, such as the development of commercial civil aviation, the improvement of productivity in the merchant marines, and the democratization of the telephone as the main mode of communication. The visualization shows how, at the global level, costs across these three variables have been going down since 1930.

Reductions in transaction costs impacted not only the volumes of trade but also the types of exchanges that were possible and profitable.

The first wave of globalization was characterized by inter-industry trade. This means that countries exported goods that were very different from what they imported – England exchanged machines for Australian wool and Indian tea. As transaction costs went down, this changed. In the second wave of globalization, we are seeing a rise in intra -industry trade (i.e. the exchange of broadly similar goods and services is becoming more and more common). France, for example, now both imports and exports machines to and from Germany.

The following visualization, from the UN World Development Report (2009) , plots the fraction of total world trade that is accounted for by intra-industry trade, by type of goods. As we can see, intra-industry trade has been going up for primary, intermediate, and final goods.

This pattern of trade is important because the scope for specialization increases if countries are able to exchange intermediate goods (e.g. auto parts) for related final goods (e.g. cars).

Trade and trade partners by country

Above, we examined the broad global trends over the last two centuries. Let's now examine country-level trends over this long and dynamic period.

This chart plots estimates of the value of trade in goods, relative to total economic activity (i.e. export-to-GDP ratios).

These historical estimates obviously come with a large margin of error (in the measurement section below we discuss the data limitations); yet they offer an interesting perspective.

You can edit the countries and regions selected. Each country tells a different story. 7

In the next chart we plot, country by country, the regional breakdown of exports. India is shown by default, but you can edit the countries and regions shown.

When switching to displaying relative values under ‘Settings’, we see the proportional contribution of purchases from each region. For example, we see that more than a third of Indian exports went to Asian countries in recent decades.

This gives us an interesting perspective on the changing nature of trade partnerships. In India, we see the rising importance of trade with Africa—a pattern that we discuss in more detail below .

Trade around the world today

How much do countries trade, trade openness around the world.

The metric trade as a share of GDP gives us an idea of global integration by capturing all incoming and outgoing transactions of a country.

The charts shows that countries differ a lot in the extent to which they engage in trade. Trade, for example, is much less important to the US economy than for other rich countries.

If you press the play button on the map, you can see changes over time. This reveals that, despite the great variation between countries, there is a common trend: over the last couple of decades trade openness has gone up in most countries.

Exports and imports in real dollars

Expressing the value of trade as a share of GDP tells us the importance of trade in relation to the size of economic activity. Let's now take a look at trade in monetary terms – this tells us the importance of trade in absolute, rather than relative terms.

The chart shows the value of exports (goods plus services) in dollars, country by country.

The main takeaway here is that the trend towards more trade is more pronounced than in the charts showing shares of GDP. This is not surprising: most countries today produce more than a couple of decades ago , and at the same time they trade more of what they produce. 8

What do countries trade?

Trade in goods vs. trade in services.

Trade transactions include goods (tangible products that are physically shipped across borders by road, rail, water, or air) and services (intangible commodities, such as tourism, financial services, and legal advice).

Many traded services make merchandise trade easier or cheaper—for example, shipping services, or insurance and financial services.

Trade in goods has been happening for millennia , while trade in services is a relatively recent phenomenon.

In some countries services are today an important driver of trade: in the UK services account for around half of all exports; and in the Bahamas, almost all exports are services.

In other countries, such as Nigeria and Venezuela, services account for a small share of total exports.

Globally, trade in goods accounts for the majority of trade transactions. But as this chart shows, the share of services in total global exports has slightly increased in recent decades. 9

How are trade partnerships changing?

Bilateral trade is becoming increasingly common.

If we consider all pairs of countries that engage in trade around the world, we find that in the majority of cases, there is a bilateral relationship today: most countries that export goods to a country also import goods from the same country.

The interactive visualization shows this. 10 In the chart, all possible country pairs are partitioned into three categories: the top portion represents the fraction of country pairs that do not trade with one another; the middle portion represents those that trade in both directions (they export to one another); and the bottom portion represents those that trade in one direction only (one country imports from, but does not export to, the other country).

As we can see, bilateral trade is becoming increasingly common (the middle portion has grown substantially). However, many countries still do not trade with each other at all.

South-South trade is becoming increasingly important

The next visualization here shows the share of world merchandise trade that corresponds to exchanges between today's rich countries and the rest of the world.

The 'rich countries' in this chart are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States. 'Non-rich countries' are all the other countries in the world.

As we can see, up until the Second World War, the majority of trade transactions involved exchanges between this small group of rich countries. But this has changed quickly over the last couple of decades, and today, trade between non-rich countries is just as important as trade between rich countries.

In the past two decades, China has been a key driver of this dynamic: the UN Human Development Report (2013) estimates that between 1992 and 2011, China's trade with Sub-Saharan Africa rose from $1 billion to more than $140 billion. 11

The majority of preferential trade agreements are between emerging economies

The last few decades have not only seen an increase in the volume of international trade, but also an increase in the number of preferential trade agreements through which exchanges take place. A preferential trade agreement is a trade pact that reduces tariffs between the participating countries for certain products.

The visualization here shows the evolution of the cumulative number of preferential trade agreements in force worldwide, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO). These numbers include notified and non-notified preferential agreements (the source reports that only about two-thirds of the agreements currently in force have been notified to the WTO) and are disaggregated by country groups.

This figure shows the increasingly important role of trade between developing countries (South-South trade), vis-a-vis trade between developed and developing countries (North-South trade). In the late 1970s, North-South agreements accounted for more than half of all agreements – in 2010, they accounted for about one-quarter. Today, the majority of preferential trade agreements are between developing economies.

Trading patterns have been changing quickly in middle-income countries

An important change in the composition of exported goods in these countries has accompanied the increase in trade among emerging economies over the last half century.

The next visualization plots the share of food exports in each country's total exported merchandise. These figures, produced by the World Bank, correspond to the Standard International Trade Classification, in which 'food' includes, among other goods, live animals, beverages, tobacco, coffee, oils, and fats.

Two points stand out. First, the relative importance of food exports has substantially decreased in most countries since the 1960s (although globally, it has gone up slightly more recently). Second, this decrease has been largest in middle-income countries, particularly in Latin America.

Regarding levels, as one would expect, in high-income countries, food still accounts for a much smaller share of merchandise exports than in most low- and middle-income-countries.

Trade generates efficiency gains

The raw correlation between trade and growth.

Over the last couple of centuries, the world economy has experienced sustained positive economic growth , and over the same period, this process of economic growth has been accompanied by even faster growth in global trade .

In a similar way, if we look at country-level data from the last half century we find that there is also a correlation between economic growth and trade: countries with higher rates of GDP growth also tend to have higher rates of growth in trade as a share of output. This basic correlation is shown in the chart here, where we plot the average annual change in real GDP per capita, against growth in trade (average annual change in value of exports as a share of GDP). 12

Is this statistical association between economic output and trade causal?

Among the potential growth-enhancing factors that may come from greater global economic integration are: competition (firms that fail to adopt new technologies and cut costs are more likely to fail and be replaced by more dynamic firms); economies of scale (firms that can export to the world face larger demand, and under the right conditions, they can operate at larger scales where the price per unit of product is lower); learning and innovation (firms that trade gain more experience and exposure to develop and adopt technologies and industry standards from foreign competitors). 13

Are these mechanisms supported by the data? Let's take a look at the available empirical evidence.

Evidence from cross-country differences in trade, growth, and productivity

When it comes to academic studies estimating the impact of trade on GDP growth, the most cited paper is Frankel and Romer (1999). 14

In this study, Frankel and Romer used geography as a proxy for trade to estimate the impact of trade on growth. This is a classic example of the so-called instrumental variables approach . The idea is that a country's geography is fixed, and mainly affects national income through trade. So if we observe that a country's distance from other countries is a powerful predictor of economic growth (after accounting for other characteristics), then the conclusion is drawn that it must be because trade has an effect on economic growth. Following this logic, Frankel and Romer find evidence of a strong impact of trade on economic growth.

Other papers have applied the same approach to richer cross-country data, and they have found similar results. A key example is Alcalá and Ciccone (2004). 15

This body of evidence suggests trade is indeed one of the factors driving national average incomes (GDP per capita) and macroeconomic productivity (GDP per worker) over the long run. 16

Evidence from changes in labor productivity at the firm level

If trade is causally linked to economic growth, we would expect that trade liberalization episodes also lead to firms becoming more productive in the medium and even short run. There is evidence suggesting this is often the case.

Pavcnik (2002) examined the effects of liberalized trade on plant productivity in the case of Chile, during the late 1970s and early 1980s. She found a positive impact on firm productivity in the import-competing sector. She also found evidence of aggregate productivity improvements from the reshuffling of resources and output from less to more efficient producers. 17

Bloom, Draca, and Van Reenen (2016) examined the impact of rising Chinese import competition on European firms over the period 1996-2007 and obtained similar results. They found that innovation increased more in those firms most affected by Chinese imports. They also found evidence of efficiency gains through two related channels: innovation increased and new existing technologies were adopted within firms, and aggregate productivity also increased because employment was reallocated towards more technologically advanced firms. 18

Trade does not only increase efficiency gains

Overall, the available evidence suggests that trade liberalization does improve economic efficiency. This evidence comes from different political and economic contexts and includes both micro and macro measures of efficiency.

This result is important because it shows that there are gains from trade. But of course, efficiency is not the only relevant consideration here. As we discuss in a companion article , the efficiency gains from trade are not generally equally shared by everyone. The evidence from the impact of trade on firm productivity confirms this: "reshuffling workers from less to more efficient producers" means closing down some jobs in some places. Because distributional concerns are real it is important to promote public policies – such as unemployment benefits and other safety-net programs – that help redistribute the gains from trade.

Trade has distributional consequences

The conceptual link between trade and household welfare.

When a country opens up to trade, the demand and supply of goods and services in the economy shift. As a consequence, local markets respond, and prices change. This has an impact on households, both as consumers and as wage earners.

The implication is that trade has an impact on everyone. It's not the case that the effects are restricted to workers from industries in the trade sector; or to consumers who buy imported goods. The effects of trade extend to everyone because markets are interlinked, so imports and exports have knock-on effects on all prices in the economy, including those in non-traded sectors.

Economists usually distinguish between "general equilibrium consumption effects" (i.e. changes in consumption that arise from the fact that trade affects the prices of non-traded goods relative to traded goods) and "general equilibrium income effects" (i.e. changes in wages that arise from the fact that trade has an impact on the demand for specific types of workers, who could be employed in both the traded and non-traded sectors).

Considering all these complex interrelations, it's not surprising that economic theories predict that not everyone will benefit from international trade in the same way. The distribution of the gains from trade depends on what different groups of people consume, and which types of jobs they have, or could have. 19

The link between trade, jobs and wages

Evidence from chinese imports and their impact on factory workers in the us.

The most famous study looking at this question is Autor, Dorn and Hanson (2013): "The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States". 20

In this paper, Autor and coauthors examined how local labor markets changed in the parts of the country most exposed to Chinese competition. They found that rising exposure increased unemployment, lowered labor force participation, and reduced wages. Additionally, they found that claims for unemployment and healthcare benefits also increased in more trade-exposed labor markets.

The visualization here is one of the key charts from their paper. It's a scatter plot of cross-regional exposure to rising imports, against changes in employment. Each dot is a small region (a 'commuting zone' to be precise). The vertical position of the dots represents the percent change in manufacturing employment for the working-age population, and the horizontal position represents the predicted exposure to rising imports (exposure varies across regions depending on the local weight of different industries).

The trend line in this chart shows a negative relationship: more exposure goes along with less employment. There are large deviations from the trend (there are some low-exposure regions with big negative changes in employment); but the paper provides more sophisticated regressions and robustness checks, and finds that this relationship is statistically significant.

This result is important because it shows that the labor market adjustments were large. Many workers and communities were affected over a long period of time. 21

But it's also important to keep in mind that Autor and colleagues are only giving us a partial perspective on the total effect of trade on employment. In particular, comparing changes in employment at the regional level misses the fact that firms operate in multiple regions and industries at the same time. Indeed, Ildikó Magyari found evidence suggesting the Chinese trade shock provided incentives for US firms to diversify and reorganize production. 22

So companies that outsourced jobs to China often ended up closing some lines of business, but at the same time expanded other lines elsewhere in the US. This means that job losses in some regions subsidized new jobs in other parts of the country.

On the whole, Magyari finds that although Chinese imports may have reduced employment within some establishments, these losses were more than offset by gains in employment within the same firms in other places. This is no consolation to people who lost their jobs. But it is necessary to add this perspective to the simplistic story of "trade with China is bad for US workers".

Evidence from the expansion of trade in India and the impact on poverty reductions

Another important paper in this field is Topalova (2010): "Factor immobility and regional impacts of trade liberalization: Evidence on poverty from India". 23

In this paper, Topalova examines the impact of trade liberalization on poverty across different regions in India, using the sudden and extensive change in India's trade policy in 1991. She finds that rural regions that were more exposed to liberalization experienced a slower decline in poverty and lower consumption growth.

Analyzing the mechanisms underlying this effect, Topalova finds that liberalization had a stronger negative impact among the least geographically mobile at the bottom of the income distribution and in places where labor laws deterred workers from reallocating across sectors.

The evidence from India shows that (i) discussions that only look at "winners" in poor countries and "losers" in rich countries miss the point that the gains from trade are unequally distributed within both sets of countries; and (ii) context-specific factors, like worker mobility across sectors and geographic regions, are crucial to understand the impact of trade on incomes.

Evidence from other studies

Donaldson (2018) uses archival data from colonial India to estimate the impact of India’s vast railroad network. He finds railroads increased trade, and in doing so they increased real incomes (and reduced income volatility). 24
Porto (2006) looks at the distributional effects of Mercosur on Argentine families, and finds this regional trade agreement led to benefits across the entire income distribution. He finds the effect was progressive: poor households gained more than middle-income households because prior to the reform, trade protection benefitted the rich disproportionately. 25
Trefler (2004) looks at the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and finds there was a group who bore "adjustment costs" (displaced workers and struggling plants) and a group who enjoyed "long-run gains" (consumers and efficient plants). 26

The link between trade and the cost of living

The fact that trade negatively affects labor market opportunities for specific groups of people does not necessarily imply that trade has a negative aggregate effect on household welfare. This is because, while trade affects wages and employment, it also affects the prices of consumption goods. So households are affected both as consumers and as wage earners.

Most studies focus on the earnings channel and try to approximate the impact of trade on welfare by looking at how much wages can buy, using as a reference the changing prices of a fixed basket of goods.

This approach is problematic because it fails to consider welfare gains from increased product variety, and obscures complicated distributional issues such as the fact that poor and rich individuals consume different baskets so they benefit differently from changes in relative prices. 27

Ideally, studies looking at the impact of trade on household welfare should rely on fine-grained data on prices, consumption, and earnings. This is the approach followed in Atkin, Faber, and Gonzalez-Navarro (2018): "Retail globalization and household welfare: Evidence from Mexico". 28

Atkin and coauthors use a uniquely rich dataset from Mexico, and find that the arrival of global retail chains led to reductions in the incomes of traditional retail sector workers, but had little impact on average municipality-level incomes or employment; and led to lower costs of living for both rich and poor households.

The chart here shows the estimated distribution of total welfare gains across the household income distribution (the light-gray lines correspond to confidence intervals). These are proportional gains expressed as a percent of initial household income.

As we can see, there is a net positive welfare effect across all income groups; but these improvements in welfare are regressive, in the sense that richer households gain proportionally more (about 7.5 percent gain compared to 5 percent). 29

Evidence from other countries confirms this is not an isolated case – the expenditure channel really seems to be an important and understudied source of household welfare. Giuseppe Berlingieri, Holger Breinlich, Swati Dhingra, for example, investigated the consumer benefits from trade agreements implemented by the EU between 1993 and 2013; and they found that these trade agreements increased the quality of available products, which translated into a cumulative reduction in consumer prices equivalent to savings of €24 billion per year for EU consumers. 30

Implications of trade’s distributional effects

The available evidence shows that, for some groups of people, trade has a negative effect on wages and employment opportunities; at the same time, it has a large positive effect via lower consumer prices and increased product availability.

Two points are worth emphasizing.

For some households, the net effect is positive. But for some households that's not the case. In particular, workers who lose their jobs can be affected for extended periods of time, so the positive effect via lower prices is not enough to compensate them for the reduction in earnings.

On the whole, if we aggregate changes in welfare across households, the net effect is usually positive. But this is hardly a consolation for the worse off.

This highlights a complex reality: There are aggregate gains from trade , but there are also real distributional concerns. Even if trade is not a major driver of income inequalities , it's important to keep in mind that public policies, such as unemployment benefits and other safety-net programs, can and should help redistribute the gains from trade.

Explaining trade patterns: Theory and Evidence

Comparative advantage, theory: what is 'comparative advantage' and why does it matter to understand trade.

In economic theory, the 'economic cost' – or the 'opportunity cost' – of producing a good is the value of everything you need to give up in order to produce that good.

Economic costs include physical inputs (the value of the stuff you use to produce the good), plus forgone opportunities (when you allocate scarce resources to a task, you give up alternative uses of those resources).

A country or a person is said to have a 'comparative advantage' if it can produce something at a lower opportunity cost than its trade partners.

The forgone opportunities of production are key to understanding this concept. It is precisely this that distinguishes absolute advantage from comparative advantage.

To see the difference between comparative and absolute advantage, consider a commercial aviation pilot and a baker. Suppose the pilot is an excellent chef, and she can bake just as well, or even better than the baker. In this case, the pilot has an absolute advantage in both tasks. Yet the baker probably has a comparative advantage in baking, because the opportunity cost of baking is much higher for the pilot.

The freely available economics textbook The Economy: Economics for a Changing World explains this as follows: "A person or country has comparative advantage in the production of a particular good, if the cost of producing an additional unit of that good relative to the cost of producing another good is lower than another person or country’s cost to produce the same two goods."

At the individual level, comparative advantage explains why you might want to delegate tasks to someone else, even if you can do those tasks better and faster than them. This may sound counterintuitive, but it is not: If you are good at many things, it means that investing time in one task has a high opportunity cost, because you are not doing the other amazing things you could be doing with your time and resources. So, at least from an efficiency point of view, you should specialize on what you are best at, and delegate the rest.

The same logic applies to countries. Broadly speaking, the principle of comparative advantage postulates that all nations can gain from trade if each specializes in producing what they are relatively more efficient at producing, and imports the rest: “do what you do best, import the rest”. 31

In countries with a relative abundance of certain factors of production, the theory of comparative advantage predicts that they will export goods that rely heavily upon those factors: a country typically has a comparative advantage in those goods that use its abundant resources. Colombia exports bananas to Europe because it has comparatively abundant tropical weather.

Is there empirical support for comparative-advantage theories of trade?

The empirical evidence suggests that the principle of comparative advantage does help explain trade patterns. Bernhofen and Brown (2004) 32 , for instance, provide evidence using the experience of Japan. Specifically, they exploit Japan’s dramatic nineteenth-century move from a state of near complete isolation to wide trade openness.

The graph here shows the price changes of the key tradable goods after the opening up to trade. It presents a scatter diagram of the net exports in 1869 graphed in relation to the change in prices from 1851–53 to 1869. As we can see, this is consistent with the theory: after opening to trade, the relative prices of major exports such as silk increased (Japan exported what was cheap for them to produce and which was valuable abroad), while the relative price of imports such as sugar declined (they imported what was relatively more difficult for them to produce, but was cheap abroad).

Trade diminishes with distance

The resistance that geography imposes on trade has long been studied in the empirical economics literature – and the main conclusion is that trade intensity is strongly linked to geographic distance.

The visualization, from Eaton and Kortum (2002), graphs 'normalized import shares' against distance. 33 Each dot represents a country pair from a set of 19 OECD countries, and both the vertical and horizontal axes are expressed on logarithmic scales.

The 'normalized import shares' in the vertical axis provide a measure of how much each country imports from different partners (see the paper for details on how this is calculated and normalized), while the distance in the horizontal axis corresponds to the distance between central cities in each country (see the paper and references therein for details on the list of cities). As we can see, there is a strong negative relationship. Trade diminishes with distance. Through econometric modeling, the paper shows that this relationship is not just a correlation driven by other factors: their findings suggest that distance imposes a significant barrier to trade.

The fact that trade diminishes with distance is also corroborated by data on trade intensity within countries. The visualization here shows, through a series of maps, the geographic distribution of French firms that export to France's neighboring countries. The colors reflect the percentage of firms that export to each specific country.

As we can see, the share of firms exporting to each of the corresponding neighbors is the largest close to the border. The authors also show in the paper that this pattern holds for the value of individual-firm exports – trade value decreases with distance to the border.

Institutions

Conducting international trade requires both financial and non-financial institutions to support transactions. Some of these institutions are fairly obvious (e.g. law enforcement); but some are less obvious. For example, the evidence shows that producers in exporting countries often need credit in order to engage in trade.

The scatter plot, from Manova (2013), shows the correlation between levels in private credit (specifically exporters’ private credit as a share of GDP) and exports (average log bilateral exports across destinations and sectors). 35 As can be seen, financially developed economies – those with more dynamic private credit markets – typically outperform exporters with less evolved financial institutions.

Other studies have shown that country-specific institutions, like the knowledge of foreign languages, for instance, are also important to promote foreign relative to domestic trade. 36

Increasing returns to scale

The concept of comparative advantage predicts that if all countries had identical endowments and institutions, there would be little incentive for specialization because the opportunity cost of producing any good would be the same in every country.

So you may wonder: why is it then the case that in the last few years, we have seen such rapid growth in intra-industry trade between rich countries?

The increase in intra-industry between rich countries seems paradoxical under the light of comparative advantage because in recent decades we have seen convergence in key factors, such as human capital , across these countries.

The solution to the paradox is actually not very complicated: Comparative advantage is one, but not the only force driving incentives to specialization and trade.

Several economists, most notably Paul Krugman, have developed theories of trade in which trade is not due to differences between countries, but instead due to "increasing returns to scale" – an economic term used to denote a technology in which producing extra units of a good becomes cheaper if you operate at a larger scale.

The idea is that specialization allows countries to reap greater economies of scale (i.e. to reduce production costs by focusing on producing large quantities of specific products), so trade can be a good idea even if the countries do not differ in endowments, including culture and institutions.

These models of trade, often referred to as “New Trade Theory”, are helpful in explaining why in the last few years we have seen such rapid growth in two-way exchanges of goods within industries between developed nations.

In a much-cited paper, Evenett and Keller (2002) show that both factor endowments and increasing returns help explain production and trade patterns around the world. 37

You can learn more about New Trade Theory, and the empirical support behind it, in Paul Krugman's Nobel lecture .

Measurement and data quality

There are dozens of official sources of data on international trade, and if you compare these different sources, you will find that they do not agree with one another. Even if you focus on what seems to be the same indicator for the same year in the same country, discrepancies are large.

Such differences between sources can also be found in rich countries where statistical agencies tend to follow international reporting guidelines more closely.

There are also large bilateral discrepancies within sources: the value of goods that country A exports to country B can be more than the value of goods that country B imports from country A.

Here we explain how international trade data is collected and processed, and why there are such large discrepancies.

What data is available?

The data hubs from several large international organizations publish and maintain extensive cross-country datasets on international trade. Here's a list of the most important ones:

World Bank Open Data
WTO Statistics
UN Comtrade
UNCTAD World Integrated Trade Solutions

In addition to these sources, there are also many other academic projects that publish data on international trade. These projects tend to rely on data from one or more of the sources above, and they typically process and merge series in order to improve coverage and consistency. Three important sources are:

The Correlates of War Project . 38
The NBER-United Nations Trade Dataset Project .
The CEPII Bilateral Trade and Gravity Data Project . 39

How large are the discrepancies between sources?

In the visualization here, we compare the data published by several of the sources listed above, country by country, from 1955 to today.

For each country, we exclude trade in services, and we focus only on estimates of the total value of exported goods, expressed as shares of GDP. 40

As this chart clearly shows, different data sources often tell very different stories. If you change the country or region shown you will see that this is true, to varying degrees, across all countries and years.

Constructing this chart was demanding. It required downloading trade data from many different sources, collecting the relevant series, and then standardizing them so that the units of measure and the geographical territories were consistent.

All series, except the two long-run series from CEPII and NBER-UN, were produced from data published by the sources in current US dollars and then converted to GDP shares using a unique source (World Bank).

So, if all series are in the same units (share of national GDP) and they measure the same thing (value of goods exported from one country to the rest of the world), what explains the differences?

Let's dig deeper to understand what's going on.

Why doesn't the data add up?

Differences in guidelines used by countries to record and report trade data.

Broadly speaking, there are two main approaches used to estimate international merchandise trade:

The first approach relies on estimating trade from customs records , often complementing or correcting figures with data from enterprise surveys and administrative records associated with taxation. The main manual providing guidelines for this approach is the International Merchandise Trade Statistics Manual (IMTS).
The second approach relies on estimating trade from macroeconomic data , typically National Accounts . The main manual providing guidelines for this approach is the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6), which was drafted in parallel with the 2008 System of National Accounts of the United Nations (SNA 2008). The idea behind this approach is to record changes in economic ownership. 41

Under these two approaches, it is common to distinguish between 'traded merchandise' and 'traded goods'. The distinction is often made because goods simply being transported through a country (i.e., goods in transit) are not considered to change a country's stock of material resources and are hence often excluded from the more narrow concept of 'merchandise trade'.

Also, adding to the complexity, countries often rely on measurement protocols developed alongside approaches and concepts that are not perfectly compatible to begin with. In Europe, for example, countries use the 'Compilers guide on European statistics on international trade in goods'.

Measurement error and other inconsistencies

Even when two sources rely on the same broad accounting approach, discrepancies arise because countries fail to adhere perfectly to the protocols.

In theory, for example, the exports of country A to country B should mirror the imports of country B from country A. But in practice this is rarely the case because of differences in valuation. According to the BPM6, imports, and exports should be recorded in the balance of payments accounts on a ' free on board (FOB) basis', which means using prices that include all charges up to placing the goods on board a ship at the port of departure. Yet many countries stick to FOB values only for exports, and use CIF values for imports (CIF stands for 'Cost, Insurance and Freight', and includes the costs of transportation). 42

The chart here gives you an idea of how large import-export asymmetries are. Shown are the differences between the value of goods that each country reports exporting to the US, and the value of goods that the US reports importing from the same countries. For example, for China, the figure in the chart corresponds to the “Value of merchandise imports in the US from China” minus the “Value of merchandise exports from China to the US”.

The differences in the chart here, which are both positive and negative, suggest that there is more going on than differences in FOB vs. CIF values. If all asymmetries were coming from FOB-CIF differences, then we should only see positive values in the chart (recall that, unlike FOB values, CIF values include the cost of transportation, so CIF values are larger).

What else may be going on here?

Another common source of measurement error relates to the inconsistent attribution of trade partners. An example is failure to follow the guidelines on how to treat goods passing through intermediary countries for processing or merchanting purposes. As global production chains become more complex, countries find it increasingly difficult to unambiguously establish the origin and final destination of merchandise, even when rules are established in the manuals. 43

And there are still more potential sources of discrepancies. For example differences in customs and tax regimes, and differences between "general" and "special" trade systems (i.e. differences between statistical territories and actual country borders, which do not often coincide because of things like 'custom free zones'). 44

Even when two sources have identical trade estimates, inconsistencies in published data can arise from differences in exchange rates. If a dataset reports cross-country trade data in US dollars, estimates will vary depending on the exchange rates used. Different exchange rates will lead to conflicting estimates, even if figures in local currency units are consistent.

A checklist for comparing sources

Asymmetries in international trade statistics are large and arise for a variety of reasons. These include conceptual inconsistencies across measurement standards and inconsistencies in the way countries apply agreed-upon protocols. Here's a checklist of issues to keep in mind when comparing sources.

Differences in underlying records: is trade measured from National Accounts data rather than directly from custom or tax records?
Differences in import and export valuations: are transactions valued at FOB or CIF prices?
Inconsistent attribution of trade partners: how is the origin and final destination of merchandise established?
Difference between 'goods' and 'merchandise': how are re-importing, re-exporting, and intermediary merchanting transactions recorded?
Exchange rates: how are values converted from local currency units to the currency that allows international comparisons (most often the US-$)?
Differences between 'general' and 'special' trade system: how is trade recorded for custom-free zones?
Other issues: Time of recording, confidentiality policies, product classification, deliberate mis-invoicing for illicit purposes.

Many organizations producing trade data have long recognized these factors. Indeed, international organizations often incorporate corrections in an attempt to improve data quality.

The OECD's Balanced International Merchandise Trade Statistics , for example, uses its own approach to correct and reconcile international merchandise trade statistics. 45

The corrections applied in the OECD's 'balanced' series make this the best source for cross-country comparisons. However, this dataset has low coverage across countries, and it only goes back to 2011. This is an important obstacle since the complex adjustments introduced by the OECD imply we can't easily improve coverage by appending data from other sources. At Our World in Data we have chosen to rely on CEPII as the main source for exploring long-run changes in international trade, but we also rely on World Bank and OECD data for up-to-date cross-country comparisons.

There are two key lessons from all of this. The first lesson is that, for most users of trade data out there, there is no obvious way of choosing between sources. And the second lesson is that, because of statistical glitches, researchers and policymakers should always take analyses of trade data with a pinch of salt. For example, in a recent high-profile report , researchers attributed mismatches in bilateral trade data to illicit financial flows through trade mis-invoicing (or trade-based money laundering). As we show here, this interpretation of the data is not appropriate, since mismatches in the data can, and often do arise from measurement inconsistencies rather than malfeasance. 46

Hopefully, the discussion and checklist above can help researchers better interpret and choose between conflicting data sources.

Interactive charts on Trade and Globalization

The openness index, when calculated for the world as a whole, includes double-counting of transactions: When country A sells goods to country B, this shows up in the data both as an import (B imports from A) and as an export (A sells to B).

Indeed, if you compare the chart showing the global trade openness index and the chart showing global merchandise exports as a share of GDP , you find that the former is almost twice as large as the latter.

Why is the global openness index not exactly twice the value reported in the chart plotting global merchandise exports? There a three reasons.

First, the global openness index uses different sources. Second, the global openness index includes trade in goods and services, while merchandise exports include goods but not services. And third, the amount that country A reports exporting to country B does not usually match the amount that B reports importing from A.

We explore this in more detail in our measurement section below .

Klasing and Milionis (2014), one of the sources in the chart, published an additional set of estimates under an alternative specification. Similarly, for the period 1960-2015, the World Bank's World Development Indicators published an alternative set of estimates similar but not identical to those included from the Penn World Tables (9.1). You find all these alternative overlapping sources in this comparison chart .

Leonor Freire Costa, Nuno Palma, and Jaime Reis (2015) – The great escape? The contribution of the empire to Portugal's economic growth, 1500–1800 Leonor Freire Costa Nuno Palma Jaime Reis European Review of Economic History, Volume 19, Issue 1, 1 February 2015, Pages 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heu019

Broadberry and O'Rourke (2010) - The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe: Volume 2, 1870 to the Present. Cambridge University Press.

Integration in the goods markets is measured here through the 'trade openness index', which is defined by the sum of exports and imports as a share of GDP. In our interactive chart you can explore trends in trade openness over this period for a selection of European countries.

Broadberry and O'Rourke (2010) - The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe: Volume 2, 1870 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. The graph depicts the “evolution of three indicators measuring integration in commodity, labor, and capital markets over the long run. Commodity market integration is measured by computing the ratio of exports to GDP. Labor market integration is measured by dividing the migratory turnover by population. Financial integration is measured using Feldstein–Horioka estimators of current account disconnectedness.”

We also have the same chart but showing imports .

We also have the same chart, but showing imports .

This interactive chart shows trade in services as a share of GDP across countries and regions.

This chart was inspired by a chart from Helpman, E., Melitz, M., & Rubinstein, Y. (2007). Estimating trade flows: Trading partners and trading volumes (No. w12927). National Bureau of Economic Research.

We also have the same data, but as a stacked-area chart .

There are different ways of capturing this correlation. I focus here on all countries with data over the period 1945-2014. You can find a similar chart using different data sources and time periods in Ventura, J. (2005). A global view of economic growth. Handbook of economic growth, 1, 1419-1497. Online here .

The textbook The Economy: Economics for a Changing World explains this in more detail.

Frankel, J. A., & Romer, D. H. (1999). Does trade cause growth? American Economic Review, 89(3), 379-399.

Alcalá, F., & Ciccone, A. (2004). Trade and productivity . The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119(2), 613-646.

There are many papers that try to answer this specific question with macro data. For an overview of papers and methods see: Durlauf, S. N., Johnson, P. A., & Temple, J. R. (2005). Growth econometrics. Handbook of economic growth, 1, 555-677.

Pavcnik, N. (2002). Trade liberalization, exit, and productivity improvements: Evidence from Chilean plants . The Review of Economic Studies, 69(1), 245-276.

Bloom, N., Draca, M., & Van Reenen, J. (2016). Trade induced technical change? The impact of Chinese imports on innovation, IT and productivity. The Review of Economic Studies, 83(1), 87-117. Available online here .

You can read more about these economic concepts, and the related predictions from economic theory, in Chapter 18 of the textbook The Economy: Economics for a Changing World .

David, H., Dorn, D., & Hanson, G. H. (2013). The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States . American Economic Review, 103(6), 2121-68.

It's important to mention here that the economist Jonathan Rothwell wrote a paper suggesting these findings are the result of a statistical illusion. Rothwell's critique received some attention from the media , but Autor and coauthors provided a reply , which I think successfully refutes this claim.

Magyari, I. (2017). Firm Reorganization, Chinese Imports, and US Manufacturing Employment . US Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies.

Topalova, P. (2010). Factor immobility and regional impacts of trade liberalization: Evidence on poverty from India . American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2(4), 1-41.

Donaldson, D. (2018). Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the impact of transportation infrastructure . American Economic Review, 108(4-5), 899-934.

Porto, G (2006). Using Survey Data to Assess the Distributional Effects of Trade Policy. Journal of International Economics 70 (2006) 140–160.

Trefler, D. (2004). The long and short of the Canada-US free trade agreement . American Economic Review, 94(4), 870-895.

See: (i) Feenstra, R. C., & Weinstein, D. E. (2017). Globalization, markups, and US welfare . Journal of Political Economy, 125(4), 1040-1074. (ii) Fajgelbaum, P. D., & Khandelwal, A. K. (2016). Measuring the unequal gains from trade . The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(3), 1113-1180.

Atkin, David, Benjamin Faber, and Marco Gonzalez-Navarro. "Retail globalization and household welfare: Evidence from Mexico." Journal of Political Economy 126.1 (2018): 1-73.

In the paper, Atkin and coauthors explore the reasons for this and find that the regressive nature of the distribution is mainly due to richer households placing higher weight on the product variety and shopping amenities on offer at these new foreign stores.

Berlingieri, G., Breinlich, H., & Dhingra, S. (2018). The Impact of Trade Agreements on Consumer Welfare—Evidence from the EU Common External Trade Policy. Journal of the European Economic Association.

Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson (1969) was once challenged by the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam: "Name me one proposition in all of the social sciences which is both true and non-trivial." It was several years later than he thought of the correct response: comparative advantage. "That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that is is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them."

(NB. This is an excerpt from https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/cadv_e.htm)

Bernhofen, D., & Brown, J. (2004). A Direct Test of the Theory of Comparative Advantage: The Case of Japan. Journal of Political Economy, 112(1), 48-67. doi:1. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/379944 doi:1

Eaton, J., & Kortum, S. (2002). Technology, geography, and trade. Econometrica, 70(5), 1741-1779.

Crozet, M., & Koenig, P. (2010). Structural Gravity Equations with Intensive and Extensive Margins. The Canadian Journal of Economics / Revue Canadienne D'Economique, 43(1), 41-62. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40389555

Manova, Kalina. "Credit constraints, heterogeneous firms, and international trade." The Review of Economic Studies 80.2 (2013): 711-744.

Melitz, J. (2008). Language and foreign trade. European Economic Review, 52(4), 667-699.

Evenett, S. J., & Keller, W. (2002). On theories explaining the success of the gravity equation . Journal of Political Economy, 110(2), 281-316.

For more information on how the COW trade datasets were constructed see: (i) Barbieri, Katherine, and Omar M. G. Omar Keshk. 2016. Correlates of War Project Trade Data Set Codebook, Version 4.0. Available at http://correlatesofwar.org and (ii) Barbieri, Katherine, Omar M. G. Keshk, and Brian Pollins. 2009. TRADING DATA: Evaluating our Assumptions and Coding Rules. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 26(5): 471–491.

Further information on CEPII's methodology can be found in their working paper .

The chart includes series labeled by the sources as 'merchandise trade' and 'goods trade'. As we explain below, part of the asymmetries in trade data comes from the fact that, although 'merchandise' and 'goods' are equivalent in the dictionary, these two terms often measure related but different things.

For example, if there is no change in ownership (e.g. a firm exports goods to its factory in another country for processing, and then re-imports the processed goods) the manual says that statistical agencies should only record the net difference in value. You can find more details about this in an OECD Statistics Briefing .

This issue is actually also a source of disagreement between National Accounts data and customs data. You can read more about it in this report: Harrison, Anne (2013) FOB/CIF Issue in Merchandise Trade/Transport of Goods in BPM6 and the 2008 SNA, Twenty-Fifth Meeting of the IMF Committee on Balance of Payments Statistics, Washington, D.C .

Precisely because of the difficulty that arises when trying to establish the origin and final destination of merchandise, some sources distinguish between national and dyadic (i.e. 'directed') trade estimates.

For more details about general and special trade see the Eurostat glossary .

The OECD approach consists of four steps, which they describe as follows: "First, data are collected and organized, and imports are converted to FOB prices to match the valuation of exports. Secondly, data are adjusted for several specific large problems known to drive asymmetries. Presently these include “modular” adjustments for unallocated and confidential trade; for exports by Hong Kong, China; for Swiss non-monetary gold; and for clear-cut cases of product misclassifications. The list of modules is expected to grow over time. In the third step, adjusted data are balanced using a “Symmetry Index” that weights exports and imports. As the final step, the data are also converted to Classification of Products by Activity (CPA) products to better align with National Accounts statistics, such as in national Supply-Use tables." You can read more about it here . In addition to the OECD, other sources also use corrections. The IMF's DOTS dataset, for example, uses a 6 percent rule for converting import valuations (in CIF) into export values (in FOB). More information can be found in the IMF's (2018) working paper on 'New Estimates for Direction of Trade Statistics'.

For more details on this see Forstater, M. (2018) Illicit Financial Flows, Trade Misinvoicing, and Multinational Tax Avoidance: The Same or Different? , CGD Policy Paper 123.

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HIS 100 - Perspectives in History

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The world has always been a diverse and dynamic place, and the blending of cultures and ideals is often met with mixed results. If this is an area of interest to you, please select one of the three historical events on the menu to the left for your course work. Below you can learn more about each topic first by clicking on the title.

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Market Competition, Earnings Management, and Persistence in Accounting Profitability Around the World

We examine how cross-country differences in product, capital, and labor market competition, and earnings management affect mean reversion in accounting return on assets. Using a sample of 48,465 unique firms from 49 countries, we find that accounting returns mean revert faster in countries where there is more product and capital market competition, as predicted by economic theory. Country differences in labor market competition and earnings management are also related to mean reversion in accounting returns—but the relation varies with firm performance. Country labor competition increases mean reversion when unexpected returns are positive, but dampens it when unexpected returns are negative. Accounting returns in countries with higher earnings management mean revert more slowly for profitable firms and more rapidly for loss firms. Thus, earnings management incentives to slow or speed up mean reversion in accounting returns are accentuated in countries where there is a high propensity for earnings management. Overall, these findings suggest that country factors explain mean reversion in accounting returns and are therefore relevant for firm valuation.

Spanning the Institutional Abyss: The Intergovernmental Network and the Governance of Foreign Direct Investment

Global economic transactions such as foreign direct investment must extend over an institutional abyss between the jurisdiction, and therefore protection, of the states involved. Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), whose members are states, represent an important attempt to span this abyss. IGOs are mandated variously to smooth economic transactions, facilitate global cooperation, and promote cultural contact and awareness. We use a network approach to demonstrate that the connections between two countries through joint-membership in the same IGOs are associated with a large positive influence on the foreign direct investment that flows between them. Moreover, we show that this effect occurs not only in the case of IGOs that focus on economic issues, but also on those with social and cultural mandates. This demonstrates that relational governance is important and feasible in the global context and for the most risky transactions. Finally we examine the interdependence between the IGO network and the domestic institutions of states. The interdependence between these global and domestic institutional forms is complex, with target-country democracy being a substitute for economic IGOs, but a complement for social and cultural IGOs.

Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity

This paper studies the impact that immigrant innovators have on the global activities of U.S. firms by analyzing detailed data on patent applications and on the operations of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms. The results indicate that increases in the share of a firm's innovation performed by inventors of a particular ethnicity are associated with increases in the share of that firm's affiliate activity in their native countries. Ethnic innovators also appear to facilitate the disintegration of innovative activity across borders and to allow U.S. multinationals to form new affiliates abroad without the support of local joint venture partners. Thus, this paper points out that immigration can enhance the competitiveness of multinational firms.

Multinational Enterprises and Incomplete Institutions: The Demandingness of Minimum Moral Standards

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate across countries that vary widely in their legal, political, and regulatory institutions. One question that arises is whether there are certain minimum standards that ought to guide managers in their decision making independently of local institutional requirements, especially when institutional arrangements are incomplete. This chapter examines what follows if managers recognize two kinds of duties of forbearance in their decision making that are commonly held to be among the most minimal of moral duties: the duty not to harm and the duty not to violate the liberty of others. The chapter concludes that the standards for MNEs may be more demanding than what the minimalist nature of duties of forbearance initially would suggest.

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Finance and Social Responsibility in the Informal Economy: Institutional Voids, Globalization and Microfinance Institutions

We examine the heterogeneous effects of globalization on the interest rate setting by microfinance institutions (MFIs) around the world. We consider MFIs as a mechanism to overcome the institutional void of credit for small entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies. Using a large global panel of MFIs from 119 countries, we find that social globalization that embraces egalitarian institutions on average reduces MFIs' interest rates. In contrast, economic globalization that embraces neoliberal institutions on average increases MFIs' interest rates. Moreover, the proportions of female borrowers and of poorer borrowers negatively moderate the relationship between social globalization and MFI interest rate, and positively moderate the relationship between economic globalization and MFI interest rate. This paper contributes to understanding how globalization processes can both ameliorate and exacerbate challenges of institutional voids in emerging and developing economies.

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The globalization of business has long encouraged Harvard Business School (HBS) faculty to research international business practices and the effects of globalization. Seminal contributions - Christopher Bartlett on managing across borders , Michael Porter on competition in global industries , and Louis Wells on foreign investment in emerging markets - helped pave today’s global research path. Supported by eight Global Research Centers that facilitate our contact with global companies and the collection of international data, key investigations concentrate on the effectiveness of management practices in global organizations; cross-cultural learning and adaptation processes; the challenges of taking companies global; emerging-market companies with global potential; and international political economy and its impact on economic development.

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Globalization: A Resource Guide

Defining globalization.

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Using the Library of Congress

Literature about globalization is produced by sociologists, political theorists, economists, historians, anthropologists, and journalists. Globalization is a term variously employed, even by experts within a single discipline. There is substantial debate, not only about its definition, but also about its significance, and how it shapes our world. Most agree that globalization rests upon, or simply is, the growth in international exchange of goods, services, and capital, and the increasing levels of integration that characterize economic activity. In this sense, globalization, is only another word for internationalization. Importantly, it is economic activity that is fuel and furnace of cross-border integration.

Listed below are books and online resources that help researchers understand globalization and related concepts. The following materials link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog . Links to digital content are provided when available.

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Globalization (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) External An online encyclopedia that provides a comprehensive analysis on the history of globalization, covering: 1. Globalization in the History of Ideas; 2. Globalization in Contemporary Social Theory; 3. Normative Challenges of Globalization; Bibliography; and Other Internet Resources.
What Is Globalization? And How Has the Global Economy Shaped the United States? External An online guide by Peterson Institute for International Economics. "After centuries of technological progress and advances in international cooperation, the world is more connected than ever. But how much has the rise of trade and the modern global economy helped or hurt American businesses, workers, and consumers? Here is a basic guide to the economic side of this broad and much debated topic, drawn from current research."--Publisher description.
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World Public Opinion.org Covers public opinion by region of the world and by topic.
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World Values Survey Contains sets of surveys of people throughout the world capturing their beliefs and values.
Afrobarometer Provides reports and datasets of public opinion surveys of various African countries.
AmericasBarometer Insights Series - LAPOP Studies based on surveys in 23 countries of the Americas in 2008, including North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
Asian Barometer Access to public opinion surveys of people from Southeast Asian countries. more... less... Access the datasets requires submitting contact information and having the data sent to you through email.
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UN Refugees & Migrants Gathers the official statistics on international migration movements throughout the world.

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Small Arms Survey Principal international source of public information on small arms and light weapons, including weapon use and government policies.
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ElectionGuide Focuses on current elections, but includes previous elections back to 1998. Developed by a non-profit International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), the world's premiere election assistance organization.
International Voter Turnout - IDEA Most comprehensive global collection of political participation statistics available, covers presidential & parliamentary elections, numbers of registered voters and information of false ballots.
Freedom House Provides scores, reports and statistics covering democracy and freedom across the world. There are reports on civil liberties, political rights, freedom of speech, freedom of press, and countries transitioning to democracy.
Fragile States Index - Fund for Peace Ranks the level of political stability in every country in the world.

Globalization

Global Policy Forum - Globalization Section Provides information on globalization of economies, politics and culture.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) - Globalization Page Provides analysis on globalization and economic actions taken by the IMF affecting globalization.

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Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Website A non-profit, bipartisan group providing research and analysis on national and international security strategies.
Human Security Report Project Focuses on the impact of international involvement in wars, genocides and human rights abuses.
World Security Institute A non-profit group providing research and journalism relating to global affairs, including information by topic or region.
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Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) - Transparency International Ranking of the levels of corruption in 180 countries determined by experts and surveys.
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Bribe Payers Index - Transparency International Measures the likelihood firms based in the developed world to pay bribes to operate.
Worldwide Governance Indicators Reports on indicators for 212 countries focusing on accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, rule of law and control of corruption.

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International Energy Association International organization focused on reporting energy development and consumption throughout the world.
World Resources Institute Maps & Data Online collection of information regarding the environmental, social, and economic trends providing reports, statistics and graphics.
UN Environment Programme (UNEP) website Provides information and publications of the UNEP regarding the environment and climate change.

Health/Human Development

World Health Organization Website Provides reports on health and disease in countries and health care programs in the developing world.
Human Development Index Ranks countries on the level of human development, such as poverty levels, health, life expectancies, education, equality of genders, etc.
Global Health Council Non-profit group's website focused on improving health of people throughout the world through education and health programs, including publications.
UNAIDS Providing information on the UN's AIDS initiative to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS.

Population/Demographics

Population Reference Bureau (PBR) A non-profit organization providing statistics and publication on population trends throughout the world, focusing on the effects of population growth on economics, health and the environment.
World Population Trends - UN Provides information on population trends throughout the world including population growth, fertility, mortality, population policies, etc.
Census Bureau International Data Base Provides rankings of countries by population growth, growth estimates, demographic indicators and population pyramids.
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Globalization

A worker operates machines at a texile factory in Nantong, in eastern China's Jiangsu province on September 14, 2023.

When it comes to global economic governance, less can be more if you want increased cooperation, stability, and equitable growth

HKS Professor Dani Rodrik says his new paper shows that a “light model” of international trade governance can reduce U.S.-China tensions and lead to more equitable prosperity worldwide.

Black and white globe with a calculator behind it. Both are superimposed over a yellow background with red and light blue dots.

An unexpected benefit from globalization: Improved corporate tax collection for developing countries

HKS Professors Rana Mitter, Jie Bai, and Tony Saich with a red bad.

International Relations & Security

Harvard Kennedy School faculty discuss the future of China: global relations, Marx and Confucius, and the role of universities

João Godoy, Rinu Oduala, Aislinn Pulley, and Yanilda González sit on stage for a panel discussion with a crowd.

How civic society can bring an end to a global police violence problem

Education, Training & Labor
Development & Economic Growth

Servicing Development: Productive Upgrading of Labor-Absorbing Services in Developing Countries

The future of developing countries lies in services. Enhancing productivity in labor-absorbing services in particular must be an essential priority, for reasons of both growth and equity.

Democracy & Governance

How to smooth US-China economic relations for the benefit of the global economy: A light model of global economic governance

The U.S.-China conflict is threatening continued global economic prosperity and this has inspired a variety of predictions and prescriptions on the future global order.

Social Policy
Business & Regulation
Decision Making & Negotiation

Beyond a niche approach: Could social business become the norm?

[T]here is an imperative to examine how alternative forms of organizing--ones that diverge from the dominant corporate model focused solely on profit maximization--can help confront this multidimensio

On the design of effective sanctions: the case of bans on exports to russia

We build on Baqaee and Farhi (2019, 2021) and derive a theoretically-grounded criterion that allows targeting bans on exports to a sanctioned country at the level of ~5000 6-digit HS products.

Watch & Listen

Fairness & Justice

Mathias Risse’s “On Trade Justice”

How should society think about trade? Mathias Risse synthesizes this complex network of human activity into a philosophical framework, one that defines right from wrong, justice from injustice, and success from failure.

Worst-case scenarios: Crisis management in a chaotic world

Joseph Nye stands next to a cover image of his book.

Joseph S. Nye’s “Do Morals Matter?”

Illustration of the spines of several books in a row.

Human Rights

Mathias Risse’s “On Global Justice”

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Globalization Research Paper

This sample globalization research paper features: 6400 words (approx. 20 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 45 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Introduction

Earlier attempts to grasp globalization, contemporary approaches to globalization, the global political economy, the global cultural economy, questioning “globalization”, globalization and development, governance, sovereignty, and citizenship.

Bibliography

More Globalization Research Papers:

Anthropological Aspects of Globalization Research Paper
Social and Economic Aspects of Globalization Research Paper
Crimes of Globalization Research Paper
Conceptions of Globalization Research Paper
Globalization and Inequality Research Paper

Globalization is an inconsistent concept, and definitions of it abound. However, most anthropologists agree that, experientially, globalization refers to a reorganization of time and space in which many movements of peoples, things, and ideas throughout much of the world have become increasingly faster and effortless. Spatially and temporally, cities and towns, individuals and groups, institutions and governments have become linked in ways that are fundamentally new in many regards, especially in terms of the potential speed of interactions among them. Examples of these interactions are myriad: The click of a mouse button on a Wall Street computer can have immediate financial effects thousands of miles away on another continent, and events like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or footage of the 2005 tsunami in southern Asia can be televised internationally, whereby millions of viewers interpret the same images concurrently.

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Beyond these shared perspectives on and approaches to globalization, anthropologists disagree with one another in important regards. The first concerns the “what”: Does globalization name a more-or-less singular and radical transformation that encompasses the globe, in which technoeconomic advancements have fundamentally reorganized time-space, bringing people, places, things, and ideas from all corners of the world into closer contact with one another? Or, is globalization a misnomer, even a fad, a term too general to describe a vast array of situated processes and projects that are inconsistent and never entirely “global”?

A second discussion concerns the “when”: Is globalization new—do we currently live in the “global era”? Or, has the world long been shaped by human interaction spanning great distances?

These debates are not limited to two opposing sides. Some scholars feel that these very questions blunt meaningful analysis of the contemporary world and all of its nuances. By focusing largely on absolutes—that is, what is entirely singular versus wholly chaotic, what is radically new versus something predicated largely on the past— important questions are passed over. For example, what are the specific mechanisms of human interconnection and the particular histories in which they are embedded?

Anthropologists do agree, however, on how to best go about investigating globalization: through long-term, intensive fieldwork, either in a single locality or in several linked analytically together. This fieldwork is ethnographic; that is, it seeks an intimate understanding of the social and cultural dynamics of specific communities, as well as the broader social and political systems they negotiate. In a world of intensifying social relations, ethnography requires engagement in both empirical research and critical theory.

Anthropological attention to ethnographic detail is an important rejoinder to a vast globalization literature centered on macro phenomena, such as the relations between large-scale political and economic bodies like nationstates, political unions, trade organizations, and transnational corporations. Undoubtedly, these “translocal” entities are of great anthropological interest as well. Yet the discipline has taken as its goal the understanding of how specific subjects respond to and act within these large-scale processes, institutions, and discourses through culturally specific lenses. Thus, anthropology’s contribution to this literature lies in its assertion that social change, viewed in both distance-defying connections and inequitable disconnections within the world, can be compellingly grasped in the daily practices of individuals and the groups, institutions, and belief systems they inhabit.

It bears emphasis that a researcher cannot simply board a plane to “the global.” The empirical aspects of human social interaction—while facilitated by the “placelessness” of systems and structures like international finance networks, religious chat rooms, or television broadcasts—are produced, interpreted, and negotiated by people in particular places. It is for this reason that the ethnographic method has continued to define anthropological research, even as it pertains to globalization. The ethnographic emphasis has long been to follow the question, the person, the commodity, or the idea—all things that are continually mobilized or constrained by human activity. As will be argued in further detail below, anthropologists have tended to warn against the erasure of human agency in depictions of such interaction, and the discipline’s commitment to research continues to inform this warning. Some anthropologists have gone so far as to argue that empirically thin accounts of globalization, especially those that embrace it as a natural and ultimately unavoidable force in the world, actually obscure the means by which unequal relations of power are forged. The argument is significant, as anthropologists generally agree that the ability to define globalization and steer discussions pertaining to it greatly informs the decisions of wealthy and influential policymakers.

While often understated in current anthropological scholarship on globalization, early anthropological attempts to grasp translocal phenomena greatly influenced the discipline’s development. Indeed, anthropology has a history of engagement with translocal phenomena and has long argued that exchange across sometimes vast distances has been and is common to human social interaction. Arguably the first incarnation of such a notion is seen in the works of late 19th- and early 20th-century diffusionists, who held that cultural change was a product of initially distinct cultural traits being appropriated and dispersed among individuals and groups over great geographic distances. Franz Boas, often called the father of American anthropology, saw diffusionism as a corrective to unilineal evolutionary conceptions of culture change, which articulated the development of cultural traits as a product of independent and isolated trial and error rather than as a product of permeable social worlds facilitating cultural exchange. Boas argued as follows:

It would be an error to assume that a cultural trait had its original home in the area in which it is now most strongly developed. Christianity did not originate in Europe or America. The manufacture of iron did not originate in America or northern Europe. It was the same in early times. (Boas, 1932, p. 609)

A fellow critic of cultural evolution perspectives during Boas’s time, Bronislaw Malinowski spent over two years in the Trobriand Islands examining the kula ring, a regional system of exchange that Malinowski (1922) claimed functioned to maintain social solidarity and enhance status among males bestowing necklaces and armbands upon one another. Malinowski is most widely renowned as an early practitioner of participant observation, but Malinowski’s study also required him to practice multi-sited research, which is now seen as a sometimes necessary mode of fieldwork to “follow” translocal phenomena.

Two other anthropologists informed by functionalism and influenced by Malinowski’s study of nonmonetary exchange were Mauss and Ortiz, both of whom produced works that challenged readers to think beyond the local. Mauss’s The Gift (first published in 1923) explored the historical beginnings of translocal systems of exchange that often brought about social cohesion through gift giving and reciprocity. Mauss cited examples of this exchange among groups in the South Pacific region, as well as in North America. Originally published in 1940, Ortiz’s Cuban Counterpoint developed the concept of “transculturation” to describe the different phases of cultural hybridization between ethnically diverse groups (many of whom were arriving from foreign lands) in Cuba under colonialism. Ortiz further argued that the production and export of Cuban commodities like sugar and tobacco came to be deeply entangled with European and U.S. interests.

While the above works demonstrate early insights into the relationships between relatively small populations and an outside world, it is common to read of early 20th-century anthropology’s insular emphasis on closed, internally coherent cultural systems. Leach’s Political Systems of Highland Burma, first published in 1954, was a powerful response to the “bounded” conceptions of cultural change, as he took a regional scale as his point of entry into the indeterminate dynamics of identity formation in Burma. Leach also emphasized the power and creativity of individual actors to shape culture beyond local contexts.

The 1960s and the two decades that followed were formative in the history of anthropology’s engagement with large-scale processes. The political turmoil of the “libratory,” anticolonial wars, and rising nationalism in the global South during the 1960s are commonly cited as the greatest impetuses of this engagement. In addition, a principled dissatisfaction with the trajectory of anthropology and social science disciplines in general informed the reanimation of the Marxist approach known as political economy. Much of this dissatisfaction stemmed from a lack of engagement with political economy’s most central concerns: the nature of material production, class, and power.

Broadly conceived, the political economic approach within anthropology was utilized to understand the relations between large-scale processes of economic and political change and specific (usually subaltern) communities. The anthropological approach was heavily influenced by the “world-systems” theory of sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and “underdevelopment” perspective of economist Andre Gunder Frank. Both of these thinkers emphasized the imposing gravity of the European- and American-dominated world economy. Concisely, this world economy provided a framework by which Western, or “core,” economies could systematically exploit the non-Western, or “peripheral” nations of the world through the appropriation of their economic surpluses and labor. This perspective laid out a significant critique of economic modernization theory, for both Wallerstein and Frank stressed the causal relationship between worldwide capitalist expansion and subaltern subjugation, or development and underdevelopment.

A common perception among anthropologists sympathetic to political economy was that the “periphery” category was too generalized and unnuanced. Anthropologists believed that their disciplinary proclivities could bring the diverse reactions of “micropopulations” to capitalist penetration into clearer focus and thus provide a more detailed, if not more realistic, explanation of unequal relations of power. Eric Wolf and Sydney Mintz were exemplary in their efforts to conjoin the broad focus of world systems theory with anthropology’s long-established object of study, the social dynamics of the subaltern.

Wolf demonstrated his materialist approach in his influential and ironically titled Europe and the People Without History (1982). The book sought ambitiously to trace the history of capitalism’s expansion and eventual penetration into precapitalist societies, and thus account for the means by which particular non-Western localities were transformed into production sites of primary goods— gold and diamonds in South Africa, coffee in Mexico, and rubber in the Amazon, to name only a few of Wolf’s examples—for Western consumption and profiteering. Wolf’s analytic brush was decidedly broad, as he sought to outline patterns of this expansion and penetration on a massive geographic scale.

Mintz’s Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985), while geographically narrower in its focus, was nevertheless an ambitious anthropological investigation of the politics of production and consumption between a metropole and colony during the 17th through 19th centuries. Mintz argued that slave labor in the Caribbean was a means for sugar to become a highly valued and common commodity in England. His work is important because it demonstrated that the Caribbean producers of sugar were crucial actors in the shaping of the lifeworlds of metropolitan centers of global capitalism.

Much the same as intellectual forebears like Boas, Malinowski, and Mintz, anthropologists today are apt to favor specificity and variation over generalization and central tendency. Anthropology has, subsequently, tended to shy away from grand theories that can essentialize peoples and characterize histories as predetermined. Indeed, a continued interest of anthropologists is to investigate how individuals and groups negotiate their social worlds in creative and unexpected ways. However, this has not prevented anthropologists from using macro theories as frameworks for inquiry nor from intimating how ethnographic detail is indicative of broader social configurations. The main point is that empirically supported arguments are paramount. This is where long-term, immersed fieldwork has been and remains a central element of anthropological contributions to the scholarship on globalization.

Yet the disciplinary interest in globalization has sparked debate about the future of fieldwork methodology. Indeed, while the ethos of anthropology continues to privilege singlesited fieldwork (as this has long been considered the best means to become versed in the social processes of a given community), many argue that a world of intensifying human relations has left traditional fieldwork approaches outmoded. In an effort to address this challenge, George Marcus (1995) outlined two strategies. The first argues for the use of archival data, as well as macro theory, to situate specific communities or individuals in larger socioeconomic processes. Ann Stoler’s Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (2002), as well as Fernando Coronil’s The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (1997) are prominent examples of this approach.

The second method involves moving out from single sites to conduct “multisited” ethnography in order to examine movements of ideas, peoples, and things. Carolyn Nordstrom’s Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century (2004) takes this as its task, using ethnographic methods to track the mobility of goods and money throughout largescale extralegal exchange systems fueling conflict, marginalization, and profiteering.

While definitions of globalization abound, the greatest differences in such definitions are typically a matter of emphasis. Modern-day political economic anthropologists, for example, clearly emphasize political and economic processes that structure and are structured by landscapes of human interaction. Like Wolf and Mintz, these anthropologists view the political economic approach as a necessary corrective to scholarship that historically turned interconnected people and places into distinctive and disconnected phenomena. A great number of medical anthropologists, for example, call for anthropologists to cast light on the historical and contemporary connections and disconnections within the capitalist world system that bring about human affliction. Both Paul Farmer and Nancy Scheper-Hughes are archetypes of this contemporary political economy of health approach. Paul Farmer’s “An Anthropology of Structural Violence” (2004) outlines the historically deep and geographically broad exploitive relations between Haiti and the United States that have predestined the deaths of Haiti’s impoverished to AIDS and tuberculosis. Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s “The Global Traffic in Human Organs” (2000) argues that economic globalization has facilitated the creation of an extensive market for the illicit harvest and trade of human body parts. Within this market, impoverished populations are targeted by brokers who, with the help of surgeons, turn high profits by selling these human organs and tissues to wealthier consumers in the global North.

Phenomena like these, political economists assert, are associated with the advent of late-modern capitalism— now commonly called “neoliberal globalization.” Neoliberal globalization refers to the predominate theory of free market capitalism, which these analysts argue continues to be the primary engine of globalization. The term neoliberalism itself underscores an important element of the political economic argument—that globalization is a human-made and ideologically driven set of processes.

The focus on neoliberalism is also one manner in which scholars have come to conceptualize how the contemporary moment is fundamentally different from the past. The most clearly articulated and influential starting point for many scholars of this school of thought is David Harvey, a Marxist geographer who in his significant work The Condition of Postmodernity (1989) argued that economic restructuring and associated social and political changes in Western economies in the early 1970s sparked a fundamental reorganization of global commerce that sped up the turnover times of capital. These changes were characterized, according to Harvey, by an increasing sense of spatial attenuation and temporal acceleration in human economic and social relations. Harvey refered to this sensation as time-space compression , which was brought on by the collapse of significant geographic and temporal barriers to commerce. This collapse was a byproduct of an economic experiment promoted during a crisis of capital accumulation and subsequent recession that existing Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies could do little to stop. The experiment involved the transition from the Fordist model of standardized commodity production and its related system of political and social regulation (the dominant mode of capitalism since the end of World War II) to the post-Fordist model of flexible accumulation. The increased velocity and reach of market transactions this new regime of accumulation prompted were realized through substantial innovations in transport and information technologies. Harvey’s 2005 book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, traces the neoliberal influence behind this shift, arguing that the transition was a political project intended to reinvigorate elite class power and capital accumulation mechanisms.

Perhaps the most recent and representative anthropological effort to further develop this perspective is Jean and John Comaroff’s “Millenial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming” (2000). The Comaroffs argue that neoliberal globalization at the turn of the millennium is a process that alienates capital from labor and marshals consumption as the primary shaper of social and economic phenomena like popular civil society discourses, occult economies and religious movements, and global youth cultures.

Much of the anthropological literature on neoliberalism thus far has focused less on the logic and mechanisms of its production and administration (though this is increasingly a field of study, as some anthropologists turn their eyes to understanding the inner workings of institutions like the WTO, IMF, and World Bank), and more on the impact of, and resistances to, neoliberal globalization. June Nash’s Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization (2001) is a representative ethnography of this focus, as is Jeffrey Juris’s Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization (2008).

A second approach to globalization, coming to prominence in the early 1990s, places greater emphasis on anthropology’s most common focus of attention: culture. (See Kearney, 1995, for an excellent summary of perspectives during the early 1990s.) Many proponents of this cultural approach, while acknowledging the world’s deep history of social interaction, tend to stress the fundamental newness of the present, going so far as to describe a new global era. One of these proponents, Arjun Appadurai, writes a radical reply to center-periphery models of political economy and proposes that any framework emphasizing order in the present globalizing world is deluded. Appadurai’s Modernity at Large (1996) understands the new global era as having been brought about by a complex and rapidly changing global cultural economy of exchange. The birth of this new era was facilitated by phenomena like media and migration, and both of these have served to reorganize nationstates and mobility on a global scale. Appadurai proposes that this chaotic world be grasped through five dimensions he calls scapes, or the landscapes across which cultural flows travel: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes. These scapes overlap to constitute the particular lifeworlds of individuals across the world—each lifeworld being wholly individualized. In short, Appadurai posits a disorganized, centerless world in which no single view yields any grasp of larger processes—the ubiquitous flows of ideas, technologies, objects, and images constituting the global cultural economy are nonisomorphic and indeterminate.

A perspective similar to Appadurai’s, and borrowing from Ernesto Laclau, is that of Inda and Rosaldo (2008), who describe the contemporary world as “dislocated.” The use of this term is intended to emphasize that a plurality of centers serve as the hubs of cultural traffic across the globe. This perspective, as well as Appadurai’s, draws on ethnographic examinations of movements of commodities, people, and images and how these movements are perceived, translated, or appropriated by specific groups with whom they come into contact. At first glance, such movements suggest a significant imbalance in international exchange between the global North and South. Indeed, many Western, and indeed American, products like CocaCola, McDonald’s, and films are promptly visible in a variety of contexts far from Europe and North America. It is from these and other observations that analysts have often come to consider cultural imperialism as a force of homogenization that levels cultural difference throughout the world (see Tomlinson, 1991).

Yet cultural homogenization assumes that the essential meaning of a commodity or idea is consistent and universally legible—meaning that, for example, a Sri Lankan teenager will interpret an Indiana Jones film the same way a German teenager might. Subsequently, it could be inferred that the circulation of Western commodities or ideas will have predictable local effects. Anthropologists argue that there is little inevitability in such exchanges. Rather, a consumer applies her or his own cultural perspectives to the interpretation of objects and ideas, culturally tailoring them in the process. Laura Bohannan (1966) discovered as much in the 1960s when she observed a West African production, and subsequent interpretation, of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Liebes and Katz’s The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas (1990) is a modern retelling of Bohannan’s experience, demonstrating how the popular American television program Dallas was quite variously received among Moroccan Jews, Russian Jews, and Arabs.

The cultural tailoring described above has, in many instances, become a rather common element of cultural interaction across the world, especially in light of myriad technological advances and their ability to radically compress time and space (see Harvey, 1989). Due to this, many researchers have come to see culture as less stabilized and more diffuse, going so far as to claim that globalization has “deterritorialized” culture.

As argued earlier, many anthropologists have historically mapped culture onto territorially demarcated places, understanding distinctiveness as a product of social structures within supposedly locally bounded spheres. Said differently, place was the container of culture. (For example, the nation-state of China contained “Chinese culture.”) Gupta and Ferguson rebuke these analyses and call for anthropologists to examine how such conceptions produce difference and reinforce unequal relations of power. They further argue that cultural forms cannot be conceptualized as being fastened to specific geographic locations. Rather, the contemporary world is characterized by the freeing of culture from specific localities, and the notion of deterritorialization captures this process.

Deterritorialization also stresses the tension central to the commonly articulated local/global dichotomy. Indeed, as individuals and groups engage with and are shaped by processes that connect their local worlds with others, cultural forms can come to have an impact regardless of whether they originate in the global North or South. Thus, the significance of non-Western cultural forms circulating in contexts outside of their origins should not be underestimated. Examples of this are everywhere visible, from the ethnic cuisine consumed in the global North, to popularly imported and exported religious beliefs like Buddhism, to non-Western modes of dress like headscarves that have engendered much debate in some European countries. This is due to the fact that while cultural forms become unfastened from one locality, they simultaneously fasten themselves to new contexts and can become highly relevant. Anthropologists cite examples like these to suggest that cultural and even political-economic exchange between the North and South can be mutually significant, or “relational” in its character. Hannerz (1996), borrowing from linguistics, referred to this relationality as the “creolization” of the core and periphery.

Further examples of this exchange are human migration and trafficking, which have left many culturally uprooted peoples “reterritorialized” in foreign lands where they navigate new ways of living with aspects of their cultural identity they have carried with them. Analysts often refer to such individuals and groups as transnational, as they move across and between national boundaries. At times, the connections between these “old” and “new” communities are so strong that anthropologists have argued they should be understood as single communities scattered in multiple localities.

Ultimately, the arguments and examples outlined above suggest that the world be viewed as a complex global society composed of interweaving cultural, political, and economic processes and forms. This is not to suggest that globalization engenders a homogenous global population, but rather to recognize the untethered nature and intensified potential of interactions between populations. Anthropologists argue that only continued heterogeneity within this global society can be assumed.

Of course, the discipline has been careful not to assume that movements are experienced by all peoples, things, and ideas or that all experience movements in the same way.

Indeed, many have argued that such processes have left areas and peoples excluded and marginalized. David Graeber (2002) made the point that processes of economic globalization like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have in fact tightened many national borders, and he cited numbers suggesting that since NAFTA’s inception in 1992, the number of guards along the border between the United States and Mexico has more than tripled. Moreover, anthropologists like Escobar (2001) have argued that too great a focus on the deterritorialization of culture can obscure processes of place making, as well as the fact that people continue to imagine and build cultural forms that are situated in specific localities.

As intimated earlier, the anthropological commitment to fieldwork has led many researchers to avoid nonempirical assumptions as to what globalization might be or what effects it might engender. Subsequently, the concept of globalization has been disputed by some anthropologists frustrated with its imprecise and assumptive nature. This view is summarized by Cooper (2005), who separates “global” from its affix “ization” to call attention to the term’s problematic insinuations.

The first of these pertains to the scale of globalization— namely, that it is singular and worldwide, that it is something that encompasses the earth. Cooper argues that empirical truths about the world do not reflect the notion of global interconnection. Indeed, vast stretches of the planet, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa, remain largely disconnected from the wider world. As Ferguson (2006) has noted, movements of commodities, images, and ideas tend to hop over these geographic expanses, rather than smoothly envelop them. Equally problematic, according to Cooper, is the fact that a process that is global is everywhere and immeasurable, and therefore of little analytic value.

Second, the affix suggests the “when” of globalization— that it is currently happening, that this is the “global era.” Cooper contends that one must be cautious in asserting that such mobilizations and exchanges are historically novel—or an original product of a contemporary global framework. Such an assertion ignores the fact that massive labor migrations (forced or otherwise) in the past engendered the diverse cultures with which we currently identify. In fact, Cooper has argued that movements of laborers in the 19th century were in fact more substantial than those of the present day. It is therefore more accurately stated that human mobility and interaction have been processes long defining cultures across the globe, though contemporary movements of people continue to create novel cultural dynamics and milieus. Similarly, Tsing (2000) has asserted that theories contending the absolute newness of a global era tend to obscure historical happenings that offer insight into both the past and present.

These analysts call attention to the fact that, due to its magnitude, globalization is a concept that must be imagined rather than directly experienced. Yet this is not to suggest that a singular system is out there—that it is simply a matter of lacking the proper tools to see it in its entirety. A metaphor commonly invoked to describe globalization imagines several blind men examining the extremities of an elephant. One man touches the trunk, another a tusk. Several stroke the elephant’s legs. Each man will argue that he knows what the elephant is, or how the elephant in its entirety appears. Yet due to the size of the elephant and the sensory limitations of the men, none has the ability to know it fully. The problem with this metaphor is that it assumes a singular entity—the elephant—or a coherent framework that one claims to know is there but cannot fully experience. The consensus among critical anthropologists like Cooper and Tsing disputes this, arguing that globalization is an analytic construct, not a coherent world-making system. Moreover, they argue that collecting the variety of exchanges shaping relationships in the world under a single moniker makes for an inadequate analytic category, for it fails to capture the specific mechanisms of interconnection and the histories in which they are embedded. This is a view that rejects a singular world-making system in favor of a pluralization and inconsistency of agendas, projects, and processes. These international projects may be grand in scale, but they are not uniformly consistent or all encompassing. They vary according to the terms of their creation as well as their sites of origin.

These anthropologists call for examining globalization from a critical distance, paying attention to the arguments and mechanisms by which theories of globalization are mobilized. One example of this would be to challenge the exclusively celebratory espousals of globalization—what is often referred to as the “globalist” perspective—that, through popular media information, attempt to influence ideas of wealth and mobility. The power in this information lies in its ability to reproduce a specific logic that many globalist pundits advance—that of globalization’s huge potentiality. This can be misleading, however, as the life of a farmer or laborer in the global South may be so socially and economically constrained as to prevent her from traveling to the closest major city, much less jet-set about the world.

Moreover, the critical distance approach is especially important in light of the fact that influential discourses defining globalization inform the decisions of the world’s powerbrokers, especially transnational governing bodies like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO, as well as powerful nations whose leaders read popular political pundits. It is important to emphasize here that talk about difference can move quickly about the world, mobilizing individuals and institutions to act upon it for the purposes of security, economic profit, stability, and other aspirations. In this sense, talk about globalization, when wielded by actors embedded in complex relations of power, can have very real effects in people’s everyday lives.

By way of example, a number of recent dialogues in North American academic and public circles have focused less on the homogenization of culture (or cultural imperialism) and more on cultural difference, while maintaining that a more or less singular global framework brings about foreseeable effects. This talk articulates a gray zone between globalization’s positive and negative consequences, sketching a context in which cultural heterogeneity and increasing global mobility create both opportunity and threat. These claims to know a singular global system can have powerful effects. On the one hand, recent national best sellers by popular political pundits hail globalization as a force that flattens the world, creating an even playing field for those “willing” to participate. They inform international policy at the World Economic Forum and chastise governments resisting privatization and deregulation of large industries. On the other hand, these works instill a sense of fear in the post–9/11 world, as many nations and groups are depicted as foils to global connection—their own development complicated by dated cultural beliefs and traditions that ultimately threaten to violently derail the future. Thus, while globalization has brought us closer to allies, it has also compressed the world in such a way as to make it more vulnerable to conflict and resistance. Ultimately, these are fears of difference in which cultural heterogeneity, rather than the worldwide “McDonaldization” of societies, is emphasized.

A number of anthropologists have felt compelled to respond to these conceptions of globalization. Besteman and Gusterson’s Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back (2005), for example, takes its inspiration from public anthropologists like Boas and Mead and wields an anthropological sensibility with ethnographic evidence to challenge the destructive myths of America’s most popular pundits writing about globalization. The volume’s chapters are written in clear and compelling language, and are thus geared toward a general audience.

Finally, some anthropologists have cast a critical eye on the theoretical underpinnings of anthropological approaches to globalization, calling attention to the problematic gendering of epistemologies attempting to capture large-scale social change. Freeman’s “Is Local: Global as Feminine: Masculine?” (2001) provocatively examines the implications of the partition of masculine macro theories of globalization (which largely ignore gender) and ethnographic approaches to globalization emphasizing locality and gender.

Globalization is a term that has, in many instances, come to replace the older and no less complex notion of “development.” In fact, Edelman and Haugerud (2005) have argued that globalization has replaced the term development as the new action word of contemporary international governance discourse. Not simply a term that describes an inevitable process that is shaping the modern world, globalization, when conflated with development, is a metapolicy guiding the way to social and economic well-being in the global South.

The replacement of development by globalization is also evident in South American contexts like Venezuela and Bolivia, where supposed antiglobalization social movements and nationalization policies have been viewed by many Northern countries and transnational organizations as detrimental to international peace and global economic stability. In contrast, these Northern governing bodies espouse state-led implementation of globalizationfriendly principles for the sake of individual nations’ prosperity, as well as prosperity for the world. Thus, it is by ultimately opening up borders and financially connecting to the wider world that nations soar themselves out of poverty and into the global marketplace, developing in the process.

The two most influential anthropological works on development, Ferguson’s The Anti-Politics Machine (1994) and Escobar’s Encountering Development (1994), challenge this widespread thinking. Ferguson argued that in fact such development schemes usually fail and in the process further embed countries in the exploitative systems that were intended to help them. Ferguson also faulted these schemes for overlooking the social and historical specificities of countries and favoring techomanagerial solutions that are generally applicable to all “developing” countries.

In his influential book, Escobar attempted to denaturalize “development” by situating it in the political aftermath of World War II, when, in 1949, President Harry Truman argued for “developed” nations of the world to systematically restructure the global South, reconfiguring the world in the image of “advanced” nations. Following

Walt Whitman Rostow and his work The Stages of Economic Growth (1960), many policymakers and social scientists in the years following Truman’s speech came to view development as the establishment of preconditions for the “take off ” from traditionality to modernity. Escobar examined how this language and categorization of development problems becomes the official knowledge of international development experts and how this expertise subsequently becomes unanchored to any political, cultural, or historical context. He ultimately argued that this categorization, or naming, of peoples and places as objects of development interventions has devastating material effects: Targeted “underdeveloped” communities are often left worse off than they were prior to the intervention, and in addition, increasingly reliant of foreign aid.

To what extent can it be said that recent transformations have changed how states govern and with what efficacy? Globalist claims have often declared the demise of the state with the dissolving of national borders and the rise of international governing institutions like the WTO, World Bank, and IMF. Yet, as Tsing (2000) noted, this idea assumes that nationstates have been historically consistent and omnipresent.

There is little doubt that the development of international law and institutions upholding it have changed the means by which many states govern their populations. However, proclamations of the global dissolving of nationstates are exaggerated, according to anthropologists. This does not mean that states have not changed at all. Indeed, contrary to the traditional doctrine of sovereignty, many states are now held accountable by international authorities and in many instances are forced to comply with their policies. The degree to which such states are actually constrained and reshaped by international institutions varies, of course, from context to context. (Merry’s 2006 overview of anthropology’s engagement with international law is instructive on the above points.) Thus, one could argue that the sovereignty of states in the present has been to a large degree reorganized, if not in many instances greatly circumscribed. Sharma and Gupta (2005), in their important volume The Anthropology of the State, argued that “sovereignty can no longer be seen as the sole purview or ‘right’ of the modern state but is, instead, partially disentangled from the nation-state and mapped onto supra-national and non-governmental organizations” (p. 7).

The shifting nature of governance and states at present comes to heavily bear on conceptions of citizenship within countries. Many anthropologists argue that globalization has reformulated many notions of and policies pertaining to citizenship. Ong (1999), for example, used the term flexible citizenship to grasp how individuals and groups deploy various strategies to evade, as well as profit from, various national regimes of citizenship. Ong argues that the elite, flexible Chinese citizens have discarded traditional notions of nationalism in favor of a “postnational ethos” that transcends national boundaries for the sake of participation in the global capitalist market.

When considering the various viewpoints outlined above, it is important to remember that anthropologists’ commitment to fieldwork and the empirical evidence it produces significantly informs their perception of the global. Said succinctly, where anthropologists work shapes their perspective on globalization. It is not surprising to find, then, that the most influential anthropologists working in sub-Saharan Africa talk of global disconnection, while many working in the metropolitan cities of India stress the interconnection brought about by a global cultural economy. Due to this, it should equally be stressed that every view of the global is always a view from somewhere. There is no perch from which an analyst can ascertain the world from an objective, comprehensive position.

Yet the contrasts in the above perspectives are highly positive in that they produce a creative tension that thwarts stagnation in favor of fresh approaches and directions for the study of globalization. One product of this tension has been an active emphasis on “studying up,” or turning a critical eye to national and international institutions and actors whose projects aim to influence social and economic change. The recent anthropological concentration on the predominate economic philosophy of the present—neoliberalism—is laudable in this regard. Important recent works—like Ong and Collier’s Global Assemblages (2005); Petryna, Lakoff, and Kleinman’s Global Pharmaceuticals (2006); and Fisher and Downey’s Frontiers of Capital (2006)—take states, transnational governing bodies like the World Bank and WTO, human rights NGOs, corporations, and even powerful individuals like the U.S. chairman of the Federal Reserve as objects of ethnographic analysis.

Furthermore, the means by which anthropologists go about examining these objects, as well as the way they write about them, is changing. The fact that anthropologists are increasingly turning their focus to the world’s powerbrokers means that they take the discourses and policies of these powerbrokers very seriously. This is all the more important because anthropologists tend to disagree with these discourses and policies and subsequently wish to dispute them. Yet in order to successfully dispute them, anthropologists must write for audiences outside of the discipline. Two works already mentioned, Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong and Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, are prominent examples of this endeavor.

All told, the above discussion signals a much more general development in which anthropologists are increasingly seeking to bring their disciplinary perspective to bear on public discussions of globalization. Anthropology is one among many disciplines that can greatly contribute to this ongoing discussion.

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From poverty to empowerment: Raising the bar for sustainable and inclusive growth

Growth, inclusion, and sustainability are connected, often complementing one another but sometimes pulling in different directions. 1 While inclusion intersects with issues of race and gender, this report focuses on economic inclusion for the population as a whole. MGI and McKinsey have a large body of research examining inclusion from racial and gender perspectives. Similarly, while sustainability encompasses many priorities, this research focuses specifically on the net-zero transition. This research explores how growth can contribute to higher living standards and a greener world, building on the tremendous progress of the past half century. Specifically, it looks at the economics of addressing both poverty and climate change in a decisive way—as well as the trade-offs involved.

We focus on established global aspirations without imposing constraints on the ambitions. On the sustainability side, the Paris Agreement laid out a framework to limit temperature rise to well below 2.0°C (and preferably to 1.5°C) relative to preindustrial levels. In response, many countries have committed to reaching net-zero emissions. On inclusion, while the world has made historic strides against extreme poverty, development experts and economists have discussed setting a higher bar for living standards. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) propose achieving adequate nutrition, health, education, clean water, energy, and living conditions for all. The concept of economic empowerment used in this research captures these aspirations. For each country, we estimate the point at which individuals can meet their essential needs and begin to have some security. This does not undermine the goal of eliminating extreme poverty; it explores how to move further toward a world in which people realize more of their own potential.

The actions taken (or not) in this decade will determine what kind of world the next generation will inherit. This research therefore considers how much progress could be feasible by 2030. 2 We use a 2020 starting point to give a clear decade-long view of potential progress. Scenarios from the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), the basis for our sustainability analysis, use 2020 as their starting point. Based on investment in low-emissions assets and increases in empowerment in 2021 and 2022, the scale of spending needed this decade has not dramatically shifted. The time frame is intentional. At today’s level of emissions, the world’s carbon budget for holding to a 1.5°C path is expected to run out around the end of the decade. In addition, 2030 is the target for the SDGs. Without faster progress on empowerment, the next generation could enter adulthood ill-equipped for the jobs of the future, putting many at risk of falling further behind.

Key findings

This research considers growth, inclusion, and sustainability as parts of a connected system. It assesses the extent to which accelerated growth can further the two defining societal aspirations of our time: raising minimum living standards and limiting global warming. It also frames the choices countries face in a decisive decade that will determine the state of the world in 2050.
Beyond ending poverty, the next challenge is progressing toward economic empowerment, which enables people to realize more of their potential. Economic growth has fueled tremendous poverty reduction in the past half century. Many have argued that the $2.15 per day extreme poverty line needs a complementary benchmark to gauge progress beyond that point. We frame this higher bar as the empowerment line, the level at which people can afford to meet essential needs such as nutrition, housing, healthcare, and education; they also gain a modest sense of security and have reduced risk of slipping back into poverty. Empowerment starts at $12 per day in purchasing power parity terms globally, with regional variations to account for different norms and costs. As of 2020, some 730 million people lived in extreme poverty, while 4.7 billion were below the empowerment line.
The pursuit of economic empowerment must be viewed in conjunction with global net-zero commitments. Addressing the causes of climate change is a pressing economic and social challenge—and at today’s emissions levels, the carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5°C is trending toward being exhausted by 2030. Achieving net-zero emissions, as many countries have pledged to do, would require a major increase in investment and in the capacity of energy and resource systems.
The dual goals pose tensions that need to be managed. Rapid improvement in living standards could raise demand for energy- and emissions-intensive products and services (although historical patterns could change if new consumers shift behaviors). A disorderly net-zero transition could increase energy and other costs for consumers and cause labor market frictions, creating a disproportionate burden for low-income households; if people feel it is crowding prospects for their lives to improve, support could waver. At the same time, not acting to curb temperature rise could harm economies, and the poorest populations are most heavily exposed to physical risks.
The combined empowerment and net-zero investment gaps amount to an enormous 8 percent of global GDP annually over the decade. We quantify the cumulative spending boost that would close both gaps by 2030. Lifting everyone above the empowerment threshold implies that the people currently below it would need 40 percent more spending power on average by 2030 (even more in sub-Saharan Africa and India). To get on a net-zero trajectory, the world would need to muster an additional $41 trillion in low-emissions investment (above continued 2020 spending levels, cumulatively through 2030). These are shifts in income, consumption, and investment of an unprecedented magnitude.
Businesses and the market economy can generate half the combined resources through growth and innovation. This involves not only maintaining baseline growth but also boosting productivity even further through investment in technology, new businesses, and human capital. Accelerated growth and better-paying jobs could close almost two-thirds of the global empowerment gap. On the climate transition, even with current policies, we see potential for almost $10 trillion of low-emissions alternatives to become viable for private actors, especially in power and mobility. All told, growth and innovation, even without policy changes, could unlock just over a third of the step-up needed in net-zero spending.
Beyond what market forces can address under current policies, substantial gaps remain—and so do hard choices about whether and how to fill them. Growth and innovation alone could generate progress that would be historic in and of itself. Yet closing both gaps in full would take even more than what they can deliver without new policies and incentives. We estimate the unfilled economic gap at 4 percent of GDP per year globally, or $40 trillion, cumulatively through the decade. Developing countries account for nearly two-thirds of this.
Additional societal commitments could accelerate progress but come with their own risks. Combined public and private action could deliver housing, healthcare, education, and food that is more affordable and leads to better outcomes, potentially unlocking $3 trillion of benefits to those below the empowerment line. Public finance support could change the risk and cost profiles of net-zero investments, unlocking a further $17 trillion from private actors over the decade. However, such extensive commitments could distort the baseline economy. In a scenario where high-income economies choose to shoulder both gaps for the world, it would amount to 3.5 percent of their own GDP annually; the global financial system would need to accommodate higher cross-border flows.
Empowering large populations while getting on a net-zero trajectory would take a global push for growth, innovation, and collaboration. Growth boosts economic empowerment and creates the financing capacity for net zero. The upside is compelling: some 2.1 billion people could move above the empowerment line and 600 million people out of poverty, taking significant steps on their journey toward full economic empowerment. Yet addressing residual gaps would take bolder innovation in finance, technology, industry, and policy. The possibilities include creating new multilateral financing vehicles; integrating low-income countries into global trade in a way that lifts local communities and small businesses; developing sustainable cities with affordable housing; and designing effective carbon markets. Private actors, governments, and nonprofits would need to combine their capabilities and expertise—and think without limits about how they can contribute to meeting this moment.

Since these are urgent, simultaneous challenges, we bring them together to offer a more holistic view, considering the interactions between growth, economic inclusion, and the net-zero transition (Exhibit 1). Productivity-driven growth lifts incomes and raises living standards while unlocking the financing capacity needed for a low-emissions future. Meanwhile, innovation that goes hand in hand with growth can bring down the costs of low-emissions technologies. This could lower the spending needed for the transition and reduce the risk of households facing higher costs as a result.

Yet tensions exist in the system. Global economic empowerment implies billions of people with growing demand for energy, while a disorderly net-zero transition could create challenges of affordability. Some may view investment in the transition as a project that crowds out prospects for their lives to improve—but since the poorest populations are most exposed to the physical risks of climate change, reducing those risks is part of ensuring general well-being.

This research sizes the empowerment and net-zero gaps and explores scenarios of how they could theoretically be closed. The empowerment gap is the cumulative boost in consumption needed to meet everyone’s essential needs by 2030, while the net-zero investment gap is the cumulative spending on low-emissions technologies needed over the decade, above what is happening at present. Since neither could be addressed instantaneously, we assume steadily upward progress over the decade. This hypothetical would require the equivalent of 8 percent of global GDP annually, with significant variations by region.

This is obviously a massive sum, and its scale leads us to explore how much market forces could deliver. We find that accelerated growth and business innovation could take the world halfway to closing the combined gaps. Companies can make major contributions and benefit from new opportunities, even under current policy frameworks.

Beyond this point, the remaining economic gaps leave societies with choices about whether to address both challenges in full, in part, or not at all. Countries might prioritize one of these transformations over the other, or leave both unaddressed beyond what market forces can do. They might also attempt to make partial progress on both fronts. Closing the gaps would require protecting baseline growth against headwinds, boosting productivity and innovation to maximum levels, and potentially making societal commitments equivalent to 2 percent of global GDP, as an annual average, over the decade ($20 trillion cumulatively). Importantly, societal commitments would activate more innovation and investment by private actors. But actions on this scale would also take economies into uncharted territory, demanding more attention to maintaining economic growth and stability.

Learn more about how we are accelerating sustainable inclusive growth

We frame the empowerment line as the level at which people can meet their essential needs and realize more of their potential. It has a global floor of $12 per day in PPP (versus the extreme poverty line of $2.15 PPP).

Societies are already spending on the twin priorities. In 2020, some 90 percent of the $1.4 trillion of global net-zero spending was either made by the public sector or subsidized in some way. About 20 percent of the consumption of people below the empowerment line was supported by public and social spending on in-kind transfers in 2020, by our estimates.

Are there further opportunities to close gaps without risking growth? All economies have constraints on fiscal resources. They would need to weigh those constraints against the implications of leaving urgent needs unaddressed—and against the potential longer-term payoff of an economically empowered population and a stable climate. Our research aims to provide ambition, provocation, and a fact base to inform these debates.

Economic empowerment raises living standards

More than a billion people have exited extreme poverty in recent decades. Yet large populations above this line lack adequate healthcare, quality education for their children, or decent housing. The SDGs incorporate higher aspirations, while the UN Development Programme calls to “expand the sense of possibility in people’s lives.” 3 Human development report 2021–22: Uncertain times, unsettled lives: Shaping our future in a transforming world , UN Development Programme, September 2022. When people have health, education, and stability, they are equipped to improve their own circumstances.

Continuing to raise the bar everywhere in the world

The World Bank’s extreme poverty line was recently updated from $1.90 to $2.15 per person per day (in purchasing power parity, or PPP, terms). 4 This 2022 update in the global poverty line also involved changing from 2011 PPP terms to 2017 PPP terms. But as more people exceed it, the world needs a complementary benchmark to track progress toward a higher living standard.

The concept of economic empowerment described in this research ensures that everyone has the means to access the full range of basics (Exhibit 2). Empowerment still implies living in frugal circumstances. But people can begin to build a modest buffer for weathering emergencies and can invest in themselves to become more productive. 5 This concept is rooted in earlier MGI research that quantified the cost of a basket of essential goods and services for households in India. See From poverty to empowerment: India’s imperative for jobs, growth, and effective basic services , McKinsey Global Institute, February 2014.

When people rise meaningfully above poverty, many outcomes improve, including childhood mortality, life expectancy, years of schooling, and digital and financial inclusion. Life satisfaction increases when people shed the stress of not being able to make ends meet and can fulfill more of their material desires. 6 Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , volume 107, issue 38, September 2010. Andrew T. Jebb et al., “Happiness, income satiation and turning points around the world,” Nature Human Behaviour , volume 2, 2018, found a similar relationship between life satisfaction and prosperity globally.

Image description: A circular diagram illustrates ten components of empowerment. Eight of them are characteristics of sufficiency, including food, healthcare, and education, and the other two are characteristics of security, including civic engagement and a savings buffer. End of image description.

How we quantify the higher bar

We start with consumption of $12 per person per day in PPP terms as a global floor, in line with other research (see sidebar, “Measuring economic inclusion”). For countries at higher income levels, we raise the line to account for local norms and the costs of food, housing and energy, safe water access, transportation, healthcare, education, clothing, and communication, using WageIndicator data as of 2022 and 2023. Purchasing power is consistently set to obtain that basket of goods plus a small margin for social activities and savings. 7 We note that having one empowerment threshold for a given country does not reflect how housing and other costs vary from region to region within the country; it costs more to live an empowered life in an expensive major city than in a poorer rural area. The housing may be a modest apartment; the transportation could be a transit pass, a used car, or perhaps a motorbike in some contexts.

Measuring economic inclusion

It’s been said that you can’t improve what you can’t measure. In the case of poverty, the challenge is not a lack of metrics but rather a proliferation of them. 1 Anthony B. Atkinson, Measuring poverty around the world , Princeton University Press, 2019. Starting with the holistic SDGs, economic inclusion can be framed as moving everyone toward health and well-being, education, affordable essentials, and sustainable communities.

Poverty can be more specifically expressed in monetary or nonmonetary terms. 2 Nonmonetary approaches include the Multidimensional Poverty Index developed by Sabina Alkire and James Foster, and the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index. See Global multidimensional poverty index 2023 , Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative and UNDP, 2023. It is often calculated monetarily by looking at income or consumption, using both absolute and relative terms or a hybrid of the two (exhibit). The World Bank, for example, sets its global extreme poverty line at $2.15 per person per day in 2017 purchasing power parity terms. This is the median of national poverty lines in more than two dozen of the world’s poorest countries. 3 Updated from $1.90 in 2011 PPP. See Dean Jolliffe et al., Assessing the impact of the 2017 PPPs on the international poverty line and global poverty , World Bank policy research working paper number 9941, February 2022. To account for higher living standards as countries move up the development curve, the World Bank introduced poverty lines specific to lower-middle- and upper-middle-income economies. 4 R. Andres Castaneda Aguilar et al., “September 2022 global poverty update from the World Bank: 2017 PPPs and new data for India,” World Bank Data Blog, September 14, 2022.

Image description:

Two sets of vertical, stacked bar charts show an example of daily spending patterns that illustrates how the means to achieve sufficiency in basic needs varies by stages of development. The set of bar charts on the left shows two bars for the daily spending patterns of a low-/middle-income economy in 2017 PPP terms. One bar is for the extreme poverty line, at $2.15, and the other is for the empowerment line, at $12.

The set of bars on the right shows two bars and compares the breakdown of spending categories for a low-/middle-income economy empowerment line vs a high-income economy empowerment line. Figures are shown as a percent of total, and categories include food, housing, health, education, transportation, and all others. The low-/middle-income economy bar shows more spending on food than in a high-income economy. The high-income economy bar shows spending on housing equal to spending in a low-/middle-income economy but more spending on health compared to a low-/middle-income economy.

Below each set of bars, scaled circles visualize the population living below the specified line in 2020. In low-/middle-income economies, 0.7 billion live below the extreme poverty line and 3.7 billion live below the empowerment line; in high-income economies, 0.3 billion live below the empowerment line.

End of image description.

Another approach uses the extreme poverty threshold as a floor, combined with lines that rise with countries’ income levels. 5 See, for example, Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen, “A proposal for truly global poverty measures,” Global Policy , volume 4, issue 3, September 2013. Others have proposed an entirely relative line based on median income or consumption. 6 Christopher Garroway and Juan R. de Laiglesia, On the relevance of relative poverty for developing countries , OECD Development Centre, working paper number 314, September 2012.

Another set of literature uses the aspiration for everyone globally to reach a higher living standard. Development economist Lant Pritchett, for example, proposes using the high-income poverty threshold universally, arguing that there is basic unfairness in setting a line with lower living standards in developing countries. 7 Lant Pritchett, “Monitoring progress on poverty: The case for a high global poverty line,” in Eradicating global poverty: A noble goal, but how do we measure it? Emma Samman, ed., Overseas Development Institute working paper, 2013. The lower bound of a high-income poverty threshold has inspired definitions of a global middle class, a topic of debate. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have explored the consumption patterns that point to someone exiting poverty and entering the global middle class. 8 Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “What is middle class about the middle classes around the world?” Journal of Economic Perspectives , volume 22, number 2, spring 2008; and William Easterly, “The middle class consensus and economic development,” Journal of Economic Growth , volume 6, 2001.

The concept of economic empowerment in this research defines a minimum acceptable standard of living as having the means to afford nutrition, education, healthcare, housing, water and sanitation, and energy. Many of these aspirations are embodied in the SDGs; they are essential to enabling people to realize more of their potential. Empowerment starts with an absolute floor that lifts people past the point at which they are no longer at extreme risk of falling back into poverty. 9 Latin American economic outlook 2019: Development in transition , OECD, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, CAF Development Bank of Latin America, and the European Union, 2019. Middle-class households have also been defined as “comfortably clear of the risk of poverty” in Anthony B. Atkinson and Andrea Brandolini, “On the identification of the middle class,” in Income inequality: Economic disparities and the middle class in affluent countries , Janet C. Gornick and Markus Jantti, eds., Stanford University Press, 2013. Research from Brookings economist Homi Kharas (cofounder of World Data Lab, one of the main sources of data for this analysis) suggests that this level is $12 per person per day in PPP terms. 10 Homi Kharas, The emerging middle class in developing countries , OECD Development Centre, working paper number 285, January 2010, defines the global middle-class line as $10 in 2005 PPP, since raised to $12 in 2017 PPP. Also using this general level are Surjit Singh Bhalla, Second among equals: The middle-class kingdoms of India and China , 2007; Nancy Birdsall, Nora Lustig, and Christian Meyer, The strugglers: The new poor in Latin America? Center for Global Development working paper number 337, 2013; and Rakesh Kochhar, “The pandemic stalls growth in the global middle class, pushes poverty up sharply,” Pew Research Center, March 2021. See also worlddata.io.

Since we aim to use a common definition of basic needs and security worldwide, why not an absolute PPP threshold? First, the data set from the WageIndicator Foundation that we use for setting thresholds above the global floor prices a consistent basket of essential goods and services, not the economy-wide basket used in PPP measures. 11 This data set compiles costs of essential goods (rather than the whole economy, which PPP indices measure). See Martin Guzi et al., Living wages and income worldwide , WageIndicator Foundation, 2023, and wageindicator.org. Second, some costs vary due to differing norms for the type or amount of a good or service related to empowerment (for example, the type of transportation required to secure a job or the minimum quantity of healthcare available to consumers). Our approach therefore gradually scales up empowerment lines for countries with progressively higher levels of income. 12 The combination of a floor with a gradual scaling-up approach is used by Dean Jolliffe and Espen Beer Prydz, “Societal poverty: A relative and relevant measure,” World Bank Economic Review , volume 35, issue 1, February 2021.

Our approach is consistent with economist Martin Ravallion’s view: “Any absolute line you choose will not adjust over time or across countries for differences in the costs of avoiding social exclusion and relative deprivation. . . . Where and when you live matters as to whether you should be considered poor at any given level of real consumption.” 13 Martin Ravallion, “Two goals for fighting poverty,” in Eradicating global poverty: A noble goal, but how do we measure it? Emma Samman, ed., Overseas Development Institute working paper, 2013. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen also notes that what is needed for daily life may differ across societies. 14 Amartya Sen, Development as freedom , Oxford University Press, 1999.

Empowerment is related to the “living wage” concept that has gained traction for employers and workers to evaluate wages against living costs. It has been broadly defined as the amount individuals need to earn to cover their basic household expenses plus taxes. 15 See, for example, Amy K. Glasmeier, Living Wage Calculator, livingwage.mit.edu. The empowerment line is a consumption-based counterpart that complements this income-based metric.

In both high- and low-income countries, we view empowerment as the point at which people can begin to invest in themselves and have a fuller range of choices about shaping their lives. This echoes Sen’s assertions that income alone does not reflect well-being. Economic empowerment conveys the ability to participate in society, the freedom to enjoy life, and individual agency.

Finally, economic inclusion raises the larger topics of inequality and redistribution. In this research, we determine what it would take to lift the poorest population segments, a goal that has widespread support. We explicitly do not model redistribution from the wealthiest segments as the means to achieve this. We also recognize that poverty intersects with issues of race and gender, but this analysis does not incorporate demographics.

We then convert from PPP terms to 2020 US dollars. Expressed that way, the empowerment threshold ranges between $3 and $50 per capita per day across the countries in our data set. 8 Iceland and Switzerland are outliers on the upper end of the empowerment line range and above $50. To give some examples, the line is about $3 per capita in Afghanistan and Sudan; $4 to $5 in India, Indonesia, and Nigeria; $8 to $11 in China, Mexico, South Africa, and Thailand; $15 to $45 in Australia, Denmark, Italy, Japan, and Poland; and $50 in the United States. Establishing each country’s threshold makes it possible to size its empowerment gap—the share of the population that falls short of sufficiency as well as the dollar amount that would bridge this gap.

Because we use a consumption-based metric, taxes and direct transfers are already taken into account. Cost-of-living thresholds are then adjusted for the estimated in-kind transfers provided in each country. Universal healthcare, for example, lowers out-of-pocket healthcare costs for individuals. We note, however, the challenges of accurately tracking how public services reach the targeted recipients. Indeed, one way for countries to advance empowerment is through logistical and operational improvements to ensure that social benefit programs can be accessed by their intended beneficiaries.

Finally, we note that empowerment is a per-person metric. Families that combine their resources would have better prospects for meeting their basic needs than individuals below this line living alone.

Children holding a planet outdoors - stock photo

Driving sustainable and inclusive growth in G20 economies

Who is not fully economically empowered.

About 4.7 billion people worldwide (approximately 60 percent of the global population) are not yet fully economically empowered by this benchmark (Exhibit 3). 9 For both empowerment and sustainability analyses, we use regional groupings that follow NGFS conventions. Some 4.4 billion of them live in low- and middle-income countries; nearly half are in sub-Saharan Africa and India. Some may live in rural villages far from the nearest medical clinic; others are in crowded urban tenements.

For many people below the empowerment line, especially in the world’s major cities, the high cost of housing eats into other priorities.

Yet more than 300 million people in high-income countries also fall into this category, including just over a quarter of the population in the United States and in the European Union and United Kingdom. While even high-income countries have some degree of homelessness and deprivation, most of the population below the empowerment line in these regions does not experience such severe poverty. Yet some of their essential needs are not sufficiently met. In many cases, the high cost of housing eats into other priorities. People may not be able to invest in better education or training for themselves or their children. Closer to the threshold, a person may rent a basic apartment with a decently equipped kitchen; he may even own a TV, a mobile phone, or a used car. But living paycheck to paycheck means there is little savings to handle emergencies, move, or retire comfortably. Someone whose family members have disabilities may have limited prospects for employment without caregiving support, for example.

The family of four squeezed into a small studio apartment in Los Angeles is not fully empowered. Neither is the street vendor in Lima nor the subsistence farmer in Laos.

A horizontal bar chart shows the breakdown of the population by spending level in relation to the empowerment line globally and by regions. The first bar is the global bar, which shows 4.7 billion people, or 61% of the global population, live below the empowerment line. Regional breakdowns show that sub-Saharan Africa has the highest share of population below the empowerment line, at 90%, followed by India, at 77%. Japan has the lowest percentage of people below the empowerment line, 19%.

The magnitude of lifting everyone to empowerment

Our analysis assumes that people below the line gain a bit more spending power each year through 2030. Because we adopt a common time frame for the world, this ramp-up to full empowerment would be steeper for the poorest deciles and more gradual for deciles closer to the line.

Using these parameters, achieving universal empowerment by 2030 would involve boosting the cumulative consumption of 4.7 billion people worldwide over the decade by just over $37 trillion (the empowerment gap). This boost is equivalent to 40 percent of this cohort’s continued spending at 2020 levels. 10 The empowerment gap refers exclusively to the boost in spending power over 2020 levels. The current consumption of people below empowerment thresholds would amount to some $94 trillion over ten years, if extended at current levels. We note that the gap is the product of how the threshold and the timeline are set. Lowering the threshold or allowing this trajectory to play out over a longer time frame would produce different results.

Making progress toward closing the empowerment gap matters. For billions of people, achieving minimum living standards is the foremost existential issue. Their hopes involve getting out of unsustainably high debt, securing healthcare for their children, or moving in search of a better job. Leaving so many people in vulnerable circumstances imposes limits on growth and risks destabilizing societies.

Empowerment could yield long-term benefits—and not only for the individuals whose lives improve. It would eventually create a virtuous cycle. Many more people would have the skills and agency to participate in a knowledge-intensive and digital economy. They would also become consumers, fueling future growth.

The net-zero investment gap is the incremental low-emissions spending needed by 2030 to change the climate trajectory

Alongside the aspiration to raise living standards, countries and companies worldwide have committed to reducing emissions to net zero, aiming to limit global warming to 1.5°C relative to preindustrial levels in the current century. This research builds on scenarios from the Network for Greening the Financial System to quantify the low-emissions spending needed to get on this pathway by 2030 (see sidebar, “Measuring the net-zero investment need”). Across seven sectors globally, our analysis finds the biggest needs in power and mobility (Exhibit 4).

Square area charts show the low-emissions spending need and net-zero investment gap by energy and use sectors. From largest spending need to lowest, they are power, mobility, buildings, agriculture, industry, forestry, and hydrogen.

Each square is sized by each sector’s spending need, and each contains a shaded region that shows the proportion of spending need that is the net-zero investment gap. Power and buildings have the smallest gaps compared to other sectors proportionally. Globally, $55 trillion is the total for low-emissions spending need, and $41 trillion is the net-zero investment gap.

This research looks at scenarios of baseline economic growth (2.7 percent globally) and accelerated growth (3.4 percent globally). 11 Baseline growth relies on projections from Oxford Economics (aggregating different growth rates across countries). Accelerated growth is an adjusted scenario in which productivity gains add another 0.7 percentage point. Given the critical importance of growth to economic inclusion, we use the higher assumption for net zero, a scenario that could add an estimated 3 gigatons (Gt) of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2030 if historical relations of growth and emissions hold. This means that low-emissions spending would correspondingly need to scale up almost $5 trillion globally beyond what would be needed in a baseline scenario. In this high-growth world, getting on track for net zero would take cumulative investment and spending of $55 trillion on low-emissions assets over the decade—a step-up of $41 trillion as compared with simply extending 2020 levels. We refer to this step-up as the net-zero investment gap. 12 These figures differ from those in our 2022 report The net-zero transition: What it would cost, what it could bring . Here we focus only on low-emissions spending rather than total high- and low-emissions spending, and we use a 2030 rather than a 2050 time frame. This research also includes updated data and refined assumptions. At the same time, higher growth would expand the world’s financing capacity.

It is important to note that this $41 trillion figure does not reflect the world’s full energy and land-use investment; it excludes spending on high-emissions assets. Some high-emissions spending would continue, particularly in developing economies that are still expanding energy access, but overall global levels would fall. Some of the step-up in low-emissions spending could be captured as capital is reallocated away from high-emissions assets, provided that low-emissions alternatives become viable and cost competitive.

Measuring the net-zero investment need

We build on scenarios from the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), adjusting for baseline and accelerated growth. NGFS scenarios are frequently used in risk analysis, provide regional granularity, and include a holistic view of emissions. This analysis is performed for approximately 50 key low-emissions technologies and 12 regions, addressing 85 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In some cases, NGFS variables were downscaled for more granular quantification. Our “investment” need includes both capital investment and consumer spending on items such as electric vehicles. We include only low-emissions investments such as solar and wind power, while excluding high-emissions investments in areas such as fossil fuels.

We build on the NGFS Net Zero 2050 scenario (with warming of 1.5°C by 2100) to estimate the incremental low-emissions investment that would be needed (the net-zero investment gap). The NGFS Current Policies scenario enables us to estimate how much spending is likely under current policy frameworks (with warming of about 3.0°C by 2100). Other “current policy” scenarios may produce slightly different warming outcomes, though all would find a gap with a net-zero trajectory.

We also employ the McKinsey Transition Finance Model to answer the question of who pays. First we determine, for each lever and region combination, the share of grant and concessional spending required to make low-emissions technologies cost competitive with high-emissions alternatives based on their total cost of ownership, and to compensate consumers and companies for the technological and market risks associated with them. We rely on this modeling even for 2020, due to limited data on present-day subsidies; however, where available, we have triangulated our results with actual data. The rest of the spending need is then split between private actors (corporations and consumers) and public actors (governments, state-owned enterprises, multilaterals, and philanthropies) based on historical patterns and expert input. We acknowledge the many uncertainties in both this allocation and the size of the investment gap. 1 See The net-zero transition: What it would cost, what it could bring , McKinsey Global Institute, January 2022.

A note on data sources

The net-zero modeling used in this research relied on several proprietary McKinsey assets, including McKinsey Net Zero Analytics, McKinsey Hydrogen Insights, the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, and McKinsey Power Solutions.

Among the external sources of data in this report, we acknowledge the International Energy Agency (Paris). We specifically relied on three IEA sources: Net zero by 2050 , 2021, https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050; World energy outlook 2021 , https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2021; and Energy technology perspectives 2017 , https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-technology-perspectives-2017. All are license CC BY 4.0.

We note that some analysis in this research was derived from IEA material, and MGI is solely liable and responsible for it; it is not endorsed by the IEA in any manner. This holds true for all providers of the data that went into our analysis. We gratefully acknowledge their assistance and input, but the conclusions and any errors are our own.

Our analysis assumes that providing incentives for low-emissions spending through subsidies would produce the same outcome as discouraging high-emissions spending through taxes. In practice, however, more policy mechanisms are needed to limit high-emissions spending. Some scholars have pointed to carbon taxes and subsidies as complements rather than a binary choice, especially at early stages of the net-zero transition. 13 For example, see Daron Acemoglu et al., “The environmental and directed technical change,” American Economic Review , volume 102, number 1, February 2012.

Empowerment and the net-zero transition affect each other—and some tensions would need to be managed

As people move toward empowerment, their consumption rises. As mentioned earlier, our analysis builds in the assumption that higher economic growth increases the net-zero financing need, relying on the historical relationship of growth to the production and consumption of energy- and emissions-intensive products. Going further to achieve full empowerment by 2030 could push these needs—and therefore emissions—even higher than what is accounted for in this adjustment.

Using data from India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we estimate that moving everyone to the empowerment line could raise demand for energy-intensive products and services, and in turn emissions, by as much as an additional 15 percent above the effects of accelerated growth alone. 14 Data on household energy expenditures from the UK Office for National Statistics, US Consumer Expenditure Survey, Statistics South Africa, and India 68th Round of National Sample Survey. Energy expenditures are uplifted for each decile under the empowerment line, then used to estimate the relative increase in emissions per capita for each country (based on World Bank CO 2 energy-related emissions data for each country’s direct emissions). Does not include non-energy and non-CO 2 emissions, which could change the estimate. However, significant uncertainties surround the effects of growth and empowerment on emissions. Historical patterns could change, for example, if consumers shift behaviors.

Just as empowerment affects the net-zero transition, the reverse is also true. If interventions such as carbon taxes increase the costs of energy and other goods for consumers, they could create a disproportionate burden for people below the empowerment line. 15 Energy prices could rise in the near term, for example, if carbon prices are imposed before low-emissions energy sources are widely available and cost competitive. But they could also decline over the longer term (for example, due to the lower operating costs of renewable energy sources and through energy efficiency). Actions such as recycling carbon tax revenue into transfers or subsidies could protect low-income households and provide economic development for distressed communities. 16 See, for example, Jonathan L. Ramseur and Jane A. Leggett, Attaching a price to greenhouse gas emissions with a carbon tax or emissions fee: Considerations and potential impacts , US Congressional Research Service, 2019; Frederick van der Ploeg and Maria Chiara Paoli, “Recycling revenue to improve political feasibility of carbon pricing in the UK,” VoxEU, October 2021; and Baoping Shang, The poverty and distributional impacts of carbon pricing: Channels and policy implications , IMF working paper, 2021.

The net-zero transition could redistribute jobs across industries and regions.

The net-zero transition could produce a surge of jobs in construction, certain types of manufacturing, and operations. Previous MGI research found that job gains could slightly outweigh job losses globally. 17 The net-zero transition: What it would cost, what it could bring , McKinsey Global Institute, January 2022. See also World Employment and Social Outlook 2018: Greening with jobs , International Labour Organization, 2018. However, the small net impact disguises the possibility of substantial churn as jobs are redistributed across industries and regions. In addition, the jobs being added may require different skills.

These potential impacts on households and labor markets make it crucial to manage the transition effectively and support consumers and workers in the most affected regions and sectors.

The two aspirations also have complementary aspects. Not acting to curb temperature rise could harm growth—and empowerment—substantially through effects such as impairing the ability to work outdoors, agricultural losses, and damage to capital stock. Lower-income people would become even more exposed to hazards if climate change is not convincingly addressed. And research has shown that as households become more empowered, they are more likely to be aware of the risks of climate change and, in turn, lend support to net-zero policies. 18 Higher-income households are more likely to buy products with sustainability-related claims; see “ Consumers care about sustainability—and back it up with their wallets ,” McKinsey & Company, February 2023.

The gaps vary widely across regions

The empowerment and net-zero investment gaps vary in magnitude across different parts of the world, not only in absolute dollar terms but also relative to GDP.

In the timeline we have set to 2030, the global empowerment gap would be equivalent to about 4 percent of world GDP on average annually. However, it is only 1 percent of annual GDP in high-income regions, including Australia, Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States (Exhibit 5).

In developing regions, the starting point is harder. The total empowerment gap is the equivalent of 4 percent of GDP on average annually in the Middle East, 6 percent in Asia (not including China, India, or Japan), 7 percent in Latin America, 13 percent in India, and a daunting 45 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.

A table of three columns shows statistics on the empowerment gap by region. In the first column, a doughnut chart for each region shows the share of the global empowerment gap that region makes up. The second column shows a bar chart for each region that visualizes the annualized % of GDP equivalent, based on 2021–30. The third column lists the empowerment gap as a percentage of continued 2020 spending of people below the empowerment line. The table shows that lower-income regions, like sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Asia excluding China, India, and Japan generally account for a higher share of the $37 trillion empowerment gap.

The net-zero investment gap is also equivalent to about 4 percent of global GDP each year. It ranges from about 2 percent of GDP in Japan to 14 percent on average annually in India (Exhibit 6).

High-income regions have an annual net-zero investment gap on the order of about 3 percent of annual GDP on average, about four to five times higher than their 2020 levels of investment. Most developing regions have a larger net-zero investment gap relative to GDP. They face the twin challenges of replacing fossil fuel generation while substantially broadening energy access and meeting the energy needs of growing economies—and doing so in a low-emissions way. 19 NGFS scenarios account for difference in likely emissions reduction trajectories across developed and developing economies. Developed countries typically reach net zero earlier than developing countries.

A table of three columns shows statistics on the net-zero investment gap by region. In the first column, a doughnut chart for each region shows the share of the net-zero investment gap that region makes up. The second column shows a bar chart for each region that visualizes the annualized % of GDP equivalent, based on 2021–30. The third column lists the increase over 2020 levels of low-emissions spending. The table shows that each region has a unique share of the $41 trillion net-zero investment gap. China, US, and EU and UK account for the largest share of the gap.

Growth and business-led innovation could be the biggest drivers of economic empowerment

How could populations below the empowerment line gain more spending power? Our scenario starts with growth. By our estimates, aggregate baseline growth of 2.7 percent per year globally could generate enough income to give our target population the ability to meet some $14 trillion more of their needs over ten years. 20 The lift required for global empowerment is based on 2020 empowerment thresholds. We do not adjust annually, although the line may in fact rise due to increasing per capita income, changes in input costs, and other factors. Conversely, we also do not model the potential positive GDP implications of having many more empowered and productive workers. This could help lift 830 million people into empowerment by 2030 and bring some 160 million people out of poverty, reducing the share of the global population in poverty from 11 to 8 percent. 21 We use 20 percent of the empowerment line as a proxy for poverty. For countries at the floor of $12 PPP per day, this is slightly higher than the World Bank’s $2.15 line.

On top of this, businesses can improve productivity to accelerate global growth. Farm and non-farm sectors have the potential to raise productivity, in aggregate, by at least 0.5 to 1.0 percent each year across regions, as outlined in many prior MGI research efforts. 22 Recent research includes The future of wealth and growth hangs in the balance (May 2023) and Rekindling US productivity for a new era (February 2023). This is not only about cost-saving efficiencies; it is also about innovation and new business creation, new types of work, and products and services that address new markets. If global growth could reach 3.4 percent annually by harnessing such opportunities, more resources would also become available for public goods and social spending.

Increasing investment and technology adoption will be key to these efforts. This creates the challenge—and the opportunity—to upskill workers to use those technologies and make successful job transitions into more productive sectors and better-paying occupations. Previous MGI research has explored the scale of the skill shifts and occupational transitions that will likely be needed in the years ahead. 23 See, for example, Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages , McKinsey Global Institute, November 2017. Our analysis here suggests that roughly 10 percent of lower- and mid-skill workers could see their wages rise if they are equipped to take on higher-skill jobs by 2030 in response to technology, sector-specific growth opportunities, and other trends.

Businesses have a critical role here. About half of workers’ lifetime earnings is due to skill building through work experience and learning on the job; this dynamic is especially important for those without educational credentials who start out in low-wage work. 24 Human capital at work: The value of experience , McKinsey Global Institute, June 2022. Businesses can become more productive by accelerating this process: during the pandemic, for example, US workers moved into different occupations, including better-paying ones, at a rate 50 percent higher than in the past. 25 Generative AI and the future of work in America , McKinsey Global Institute, July 2023. But upskilling does not happen without intentional effort. It will be a heavy lift for businesses to improve this dynamic, especially where the process involves bringing people from subsistence farming into more productive work.

Faster economic growth could almost eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.

All told, higher growth combined with creating and filling more productive jobs could close an additional $10 trillion of the global empowerment gap beyond what baseline growth can deliver, by our estimates. This includes the impact of social and public transfers rising in line with higher growth. This could raise living standards and transform lives on a massive scale, lifting 2.1 billion people into empowerment and 600 million more out of poverty. In this scenario, the share of the global population below the empowerment line drops from 60 percent to 30 percent and the share in poverty shrinks to 3 percent over the decade.

Lower-income countries would take longer to achieve full empowerment. But accelerated economic growth could eliminate the most severe forms of poverty in much of the world by 2030 (although we note the unique difficulties in places where conflicts are ongoing, among other deep-rooted structural issues).

The toughest challenge is in sub-Saharan Africa. If economic growth remains at the baseline, the absolute numbers of those experiencing the most extreme deprivation might actually tick up as the population rises. But accelerated productivity-driven growth could cut that population in half, which translates to 250 million people exiting poverty. The gap remaining to fully erase poverty in this scenario amounts to $120 billion over a decade, equivalent to about 5 percent of total public spending in these countries, projected at historical rates. At the same time, living standards would continue to improve for the rest of the population. In a high-growth scenario, the population above 50 percent of the empowerment standard would rise from 260 million in 2020 to 550 million in 2030. Transforming so many lives would expand the continent’s possibilities.

Some $15 trillion of new low-emissions spending could be unlocked this decade through growth and innovation

How much low-emissions spending can be spurred by growth and innovation? And what role will private actors play? This depends on whether each low-emissions investment opportunity is “in the money”—that is, competitive in total cost of ownership relative to traditional alternatives. We have analyzed these by technology, sector, and region.

Only about 10 percent of the $1.4 trillion low-emissions investment in 2020 was fully private. Our model starts by assuming these levels continue over the decade. This would mean an additional $14 trillion coming on stream by 2030. 26 Our breakdown of spending across public and private actors is based on a granular bottom-up modeled assessment across technologies and regions. For the public sector, we include grants and concessional financing and direct public spending. We have triangulated our results from 2020 with external estimates and find them broadly in line. Any discrepancies are likely due to differences in how subsidies are accounted for.

On top of that, an additional $15 trillion in investment could occur, even without changes to the policy frameworks that existed in 2020. 27 This includes, for example, carbon taxes in place as of 2020 in the EU. Of this, $3 trillion could come from current investment simply rising in line with baseline growth (assuming that spending levels stay consistent as a share of GDP). The remaining $12 trillion could occur with accelerated economic growth and, more importantly, with technological advances on the horizon making low-emissions alternatives more cost competitive.

$10 trillion in low-emissions spending could become viable for businesses and consumers in this decade.

While some of this $15 trillion step-up would continue to be financed or subsidized by public budgets, the majority could consist of “in the money” spending by the private sector. Combined with continued spending at 2020 levels, some $10 trillion in low-emissions spending could become viable for private actors by 2030.

Where exactly are these “in the money” opportunities? The power and mobility sectors in China, Europe, India, and the United States collectively make up about 70 percent of this category—and these are precisely the areas with the biggest needs for investment. Action is already building in these areas. With new supply chains turning out batteries and a wider array of models hitting the market, electric vehicles are poised to become more affordable. Meanwhile, technology advances and continued cost reductions could create almost $700 billion of new viable investment opportunities across solar and wind generation in these regions.

The extent to which growth, innovation, and continued current policies could close the combined gaps varies by region

Market forces—the combination of higher productivity-driven growth, business innovation, and technology advances—plus the continuation of current policies and public commitments could move the world much further on both fronts. At the global level, these forces could close roughly half of the combined empowerment and net-zero investment gaps (Exhibit 7). By our estimates, just under one extra percentage point of growth reduces the unfilled empowerment gap by more than one percentage point of GDP. 28 While economic growth increases the low-emissions spending need to reach a net-zero trajectory, the unfilled gap remains largely constant as a share of GDP.

Image description: Two waterfall-style bar charts plot breakdowns of the $37 trillion inclusion spending gap and the $41 trillion sustainability gap. About two-thirds of the inclusion gap is covered by market-led opportunities and continued current policies, leaving $13 trillion unfilled. About one-third of the sustainability gap is covered, leaving $26 trillion unfilled. End of image description.

But growth and business-led innovation have uneven potential across countries (Exhibit 8).

By 2030, these two forces could fill roughly 55 to 85 percent of the empowerment gap in high-income regions. Across the rest of the world, the picture varies widely. The greatest potential lift could occur in India and China. Accelerated growth and business innovation could erase more than 90 percent of the empowerment gaps in both countries, lifting about 700 million people in India and over 730 million in China above the threshold by 2030. But these two forces may have lower impact by 2030 in many other developing countries.

For net zero, the potential impact of growth is less, as discussed previously. Growth and business-led innovation plus continued current policies could together fill about 30 to 60 percent of the gap, with economies in Asia (apart from India) at the lower end.

Two sets of horizontal bar charts show a regional breakdown of the potential of baseline growth and business-led innovation to fill gaps. The left side shows the empowerment gap, and the right side shows the net-zero investment gap. The bars are split into three categories: baseline growth, business-led innovation, and unfilled gap. The charts show that the portion of the gap that can be filled varies by region.

The residual gaps raise fundamental questions

After accounting for growth, business innovation, and continued current policies, the unfilled gaps amount to $40 trillion across both empowerment and net zero. This is the global total, cumulative through the decade, with roughly $13 trillion on the empowerment side and $26 trillion for net-zero investments through 2030. Each country and region has a unique share of this residual gap, depending on its current development challenges, its growth prospects, and how carbon-intensive its economy currently is (Exhibit 9). Developing countries account for nearly two-thirds of the residual gap globally.

Two treemap charts plot regional breakdowns of the two unfilled spending gaps over 2021–30. On the left is the $13.4 trillion empowerment gap, with the segment for Sub-Saharan Africa filling about half of the chart, with $7.2 trillion. On the right is the $26.2 trillion net-zero investment gap, with the largest segments including China at $5.8 trillion and the U.S. at $4.5 trillion.

Different outcomes are possible depending on the extent of growth, innovation, and public-private action

The empowerment opportunity for africa.

This report builds on NGFS scenarios for its net-zero analyses. We therefore use NGFS regional groupings for our economic empowerment analysis to make the two goals more comparable. Yet the African continent is bigger and more diverse than the focus on sub-Saharan countries implies.

Looking at the entirety of Africa adds in other major economies, including Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco. While 90 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa alone is below the empowerment line, that share shrinks to 85 percent for the entire continent. Africa’s gap to reach full empowerment is equivalent to 33 percent of GDP, down from 45 percent of regional GDP for sub-Saharan Africa alone.

Yet economic empowerment is not a binary condition, and what matters is progress along the continuum. Some 70 percent of the entire continent’s population was below 50 percent of full empowerment in 2020. Getting them above this intermediate benchmark would be a major stride in development. This would require a boost in spending power equivalent to 11 percent of GDP, roughly in line with India’s full empowerment gap—and significant progress is achievable through faster growth and business-led innovation.

Just as the story changes while zooming out to the full continent, it also becomes more nuanced when zooming in to individual countries. Beneath the regional aggregates are some economies that have stronger recent growth momentum and others with large populations closer to full empowerment. In Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, and Morocco, for example, market-led opportunities could close at least 70 percent of the full empowerment gaps—and get the entirety of these countries’ populations above the 50 percent benchmark. Meanwhile, countries such as Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania could rely on market forces to get more than half of their populations to 50 percent of full empowerment.

In our scenario of accelerated growth, some 770 million people across the continent could be above 50 percent of the empowerment line by 2030—almost doubling the number in 2020 (exhibit). At the same time, the number of people living in extreme poverty would drop by just under 270 million over the decade. As noted in recent MGI research, African economies can accelerate these outcomes through digitization, talent development, regional collaboration, and industry champions. 1 Reimagining economic growth in Africa: Turning diversity into opportunity , McKinsey Global Institute, June 2023. These strategies could attract more international investment, creating self-sustaining momentum that transforms millions of lives.

A bar chart plots Africa’s population of 1.34 billion in 2020 and projected 1.65 billion in 2030, with segments showing different spending levels as a percentage of the empowerment line. In 2020, 400 million, or 30% of the population, are above 50% of the empowerment line, and in 2030, in a scenario of accelerated growth and business-led innovation, 770 million, or 47% of the population, are above 50% of the empowerment line.

The choices societies make about prioritizing these aspirations and putting resources into them can produce a broad range of outcomes.

If economic growth stays at the baseline, but innovation does not bring down the cost of low-emissions technologies as much as expected and no additional commitments are made, some 830 million people would cross the empowerment line by 2030. But some 3.9 billion would remain below it, and the world would be on a trajectory for over 3.0°C of warming in 2100. 29 Drawing on expected warming under the NGFS Current Policies scenario as of 2100.

Exhibit 10 shows the degrees of progress that could be achieved in line with higher growth, innovation, and commitments. While these are global results, the trade-offs differ across countries and regions.

Image description: In the first of 5 slides, 6 square matrices are arranged in 2 rows and 3 columns to show how gaps can be filled in different scenarios. The top row is for the $37 trillion empowerment gap, and the bottom row is for the $41 trillion net-zero investment gap. Each of the columns represents a scenario. The first scenario is for accelerated growth and innovation with continued policies. The second scenario shows societal commitment to filling the net-zero investment gap only. The third shows societal commitments toward filling both gaps. End of image description.

Image description: The second slide fills in some squares in each of the matrices to show how baseline growth can cover one-third of the $37 trillion empowerment gap and only about $3 trillion of the $41 trillion net-zero investment gap. End of image description.

Image description: The third slide fills in more squares to show how accelerated growth and business-led innovation can cover about two-thirds of the empowerment gap and one-third of the net-zero investment gap. End of image description.

Image description: The fourth slide fills in more squares to show how higher societal commitments can close the gaps. End of image description.

Image description: On the fifth slide, bullet points of statistics at the bottom of each scenario column show that higher societal commitments could put the world on a path to prevent an extra 1.5°C of warming and bring an additional 2.6 billion people, the rest of the world's population, over the empowerment line. End of image description.

Innovation-led accelerated growth. Countries could choose to rely solely on maximizing what market forces can do. With higher economic growth and innovation delivering the anticipated productivity improvements and reductions in the price of low-emissions technologies, 2.1 billion people could move above the empowerment threshold, but the world would be on a 3.0°C warming path. This would produce much more progress, especially on the empowerment side, than the current trajectory, although it would be far from closing the gaps.
Commitment to partially address either gap. Assuming high growth and innovation, societies could choose to address one of the residual gaps, leaving the other to be addressed by market forces alone. The exhibit illustrates societies choosing to tackle net zero completely but not empowerment. The choice is not binary, of course. Many combinations could yield partial progress on both challenges in tandem.
Commitment to fully close both gaps. In this scenario, the global population would be fully empowered with a higher standard of living, and the world would be on track to achieve net zero by mid-century, hopefully limiting warming to 1.5°C by 2100. This would take a best-case scenario of global growth and innovation along with commitments that wholly—and effectively—address the combined $40 trillion residual gap over the decade.

The important assumption in the final two scenarios is that public commitments on such a scale would spur additional private activity and investment. However, it is possible that such extensive commitments could distort the baseline economy.

These scenarios lead us to three questions about how additional commitments could theoretically close the last-mile gaps as well as the implications for countries that lack the economic resources.

Question 1: How could societies get closer to full empowerment beyond what current market forces can do?

The options for closing the residual $13 trillion economic gap for universal empowerment involve delivering essential goods and services more affordably and effectively, improving work arrangements and pay, and injecting more direct support. As a thought experiment, we quantify some of these avenues, cautioning that the effects of intervention on this scale are not known (Exhibit 11).

Making housing, healthcare, education, and nutrition more affordable—and raising the bar for quality—can yield not only financial savings but greater well-being and human potential.

First, beyond incomes, one of the biggest factors determining empowerment is the price of essential goods and services. Multiple efficiencies could bring down these costs. Benchmarking against the productivity gains and outcome improvements that some countries have achieved in past decades, we estimate the potential to improve capacity and productivity in housing, healthcare, education, and nutrition. If these are passed on to consumers, they could yield some $3 trillion of benefits to those below the empowerment line (cumulatively through 2030). In effect, this would lower the empowerment threshold. In places where the public sector provides essential services, looking for operational efficiencies and raising the bar for quality can ensure that public funds are well spent. Beyond the financial savings, these could yield immense benefits in terms of well-being and human potential.

Image description: A waterfall-style bar chart plots a breakdown of a funding scenario that could potentially close the $37 trillion empowerment gap. It shows $20 trillion covered by private business actions under current market frameworks, $14 trillion of public support, and the rest mostly covered by public and private action to increase the affordability of essentials, including education, healthcare, housing, and food. End of image description.

For instance, we estimate that improved construction productivity could lower housing expenditures by 11 percent globally if all countries emulated their best-performing peers and these gains reached consumers. Health outcomes (expressed in healthy life expectancies) could improve by 36 percent globally, even keeping current levels of healthcare spending constant, if each country matched its best-performing peer over the next decade. Globally, we find an opportunity to improve learning outcomes (expressed as both years of schooling and test performance) by 42 percent, with the greatest potential gains in low- and middle-income countries.

Policies and incentives could spur more business attention and innovation in the affordable segments of the housing, healthcare, food, and education markets. In housing, for example, local governments can change regulations related to land use, density, and permitting to lower costs for private developers. They can also require a percentage of affordable units in larger multifamily projects or offer concessional finance to buyers and developers of affordable housing.

On a different front, more labor-friendly policies and business decisions to offer higher wages or benefits could address labor’s declining share of national incomes, particularly in high-income economies. This could occur alongside structural factors we have accounted for as part of economic growth, such as changing employment mixes.

For the remaining unfilled $10 trillion global gap, one option could be well-administered transfers to households. While better-paying jobs are the biggest driver of higher living standards, transfers can be targeted to those who do not benefit from these opportunities, especially the very poorest, those living in remote communities, children, the elderly, and people unable to work. In many places, there is room to make subsidy programs more transparent. Digital tools can spot leakages while streamlining eligibility processes and delivering benefits more efficiently. In addition, governments, philanthropies, social investors, development finance institutions, and multilateral agencies could consider increased direct funding for affordable housing, health, and quality education.

A $10 trillion incremental commitment to achieve full empowerment would be equivalent to about 3 percent of total global government budgets over the decade (assuming both accelerated growth and government spending held constant at its current share of GDP). But the regional differences are stark. The amount needed to close the gap in the United States, for example, equals about 1 percent of government spending, while in sub-Saharan Africa, it would take 1.3 times the region’s government spending. Even if the region’s gap could be closed through international transfers, uncertainties remain about the potential size and duration of such aid. Large capital flows could affect prices, labor markets, savings, and ultimately growth.

Question 2: What would it take to get on a true net-zero trajectory beyond what current market forces can do?

After accounting for market forces, technological advances, and the continuation of current policies, the residual unfilled net-zero investment gap is $26 trillion, cumulative through the decade. This is equivalent to 3 percent of global GDP annually.

Increased public commitments for net zero could activate even more private capital and create faster learning effects that bring down the costs of low-emissions technologies.

Fully addressing this unfilled economic gap would require a combined public–private effort. Higher public commitments could activate even more private capital and create even faster learning effects (that is, the lowering of costs as technologies mature and are deployed widely). For example, the vast majority of wind and solar will come on stream only if there is sufficient investment in transmission and distribution, which is largely a public-sector effort today in many parts of the world. All of this rests on the unproven assumption that these shifts do not damage the base economy.

We present a scenario illustrating how such commitments could play out if countries choose to make them. Beyond the levels of public funding suggested by growth and the continuation of current policies, we estimate that an injection of just under $10 trillion in public funding could potentially unlock almost $17 trillion in additional positive impact collectively to 2030. Public support could take the form of concessional finance (that is, lending below market rates), subsidies, and projects undertaken by state-owned enterprises and development finance institutions.

One-quarter of the total $55 trillion needed through 2030 could be private in-the-money spending (plus avoided spending), up from 10 percent in 2020. All told, some $31 trillion could potentially come from private actors (Exhibit 12), including what is expected to become cost competitive as well as what could be unlocked through additional policies and public finance. Public support alone makes up some 36 percent of the total in this scenario, down from half in 2020.

Image description: A waterfall-style bar chart plots a breakdown of the global spending needed to fill the $41 trillion net-zero investment gap. It shows $13 trillion coming from public support, $16 trillion from private sources influenced by that public support, $9 trillion from private consumer finance and commercial finance sources, and $4 trillion counted as avoided spending from accelerated learning. End of image description.

About 70 percent of crowded-in private spending could occur in the building and mobility sectors, based on our bottom-up modeling. Public support would be critical for building decarbonization, since heat pumps, a key technology, are not yet cost competitive relative to gas boilers. Similarly, there are significant opportunities in mobility, but public-sector support may still be needed, especially for heavy-duty electric vehicles , which are expected to take longer than battery electric passenger vehicles (BEVs) to become cost competitive. 30 “ Preparing the world for zero-emission trucks ,” McKinsey & Company, November 2022.

Such levels of public and private action could also yield up to $4 trillion in avoided investment, thanks to additional R&D, economies of scale, and learning by doing.

As with the empowerment gap, the $10 trillion of public commitment to be on track for net zero represents about 3 percent of total global government budgets over the decade (assuming both accelerated growth and government spending remain constant as a share of GDP). This ranges from less than 1 percent of current government budgets in the European Union and United Kingdom to 14 percent in India. The consequences of scaling up public commitments and international capital flows to this extent would be uncharted territory.

Even if the residual gap for net zero is not fully addressed, pursuing everything that market forces can do would already be a tremendous ramp-up in spending and progress. At this scale, and with this additional momentum, the environment becomes more fertile for breakthroughs and societal shifts that we cannot foresee today. This argues for a continued focus on growth and innovation.

Question 3: Will societies have the capacity and willingness for higher public and private commitments?

If governments choose to address some or all of the residual gaps, they could explore making their spending more efficient, reallocating existing spending, issuing new debt, or raising taxes. Capital could also come from philanthropies, multilateral agencies, or social investors.

Carbon pricing can play a role in spurring the switch away from high-carbon assets. We model how the need for public support to achieve both empowerment and net zero would change if carbon taxes, rather than subsidies, were the primary vehicle to shift incentives toward low-emissions spending. 31 We use carbon prices estimated by NGFS that range from about $78 per ton of emissions in emerging economies like India to about $300 in the United States. We found that they reduce the need for additional public support to reach net zero by 0.4 percentage point of GDP. At the same time, the residual empowerment gap would rise by 0.2 percentage point of GDP (on average annually) unless this effect is mitigated by revenue recycling. 32 Based on changes in private consumption seen in the National Institute of Economic and Social Research’s NiGEM model when shifting from a no-transition, no-physical-risk baseline to a net-zero scenario, looking forward to 2030. NiGEM incorporates NGFS carbon prices as taxes, as well as NGFS energy prices.

Most high-income countries theoretically have the resources to make higher commitments if they choose to, although how much debt countries can carry is the subject of ongoing debate. 33 See, for example, Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, Fiscal space and the aftermath of financial crises: How it matters and why , Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2019; and Oliver Blanchard, “Public debt and low interest rates,” American Economic Review , volume 109, number 4, April 2019. Yet the choice to aim for full empowerment, net zero, or both would involve difficult trade-offs with other national priorities.

Sustainability and inclusion are global projects, with ramifications that do not stop at national borders.

Achieving full empowerment and a net-zero trajectory in the current decade appears more challenging for lower- and middle-income countries. Allocating large amounts to the net-zero transition could eat into existing social welfare programs, potentially worsening the empowerment gap. India’s need for incremental public support to get on a net-zero pathway is more than 50 percent higher than the share of GDP that currently goes to social protection spending, for example. Debt, too, is problematic for the developing world: the IMF estimates that 60 percent of low-income countries are already in debt distress or approaching it. 34 “Debt dynamics,” in Crisis upon crisis: IMF annual report 2022 , International Monetary Fund, September 2022. See also The human cost of inaction: Poverty, social protection and debt servicing, 2020–2023 , UNDO Global Policy Network Brief, July 2023.

Yet sustainability and inclusion are global projects, with ramifications that do not stop at national borders. For context, if high-income countries were to take on the combined residual gaps in the entire world, it would require an amount equivalent to about 3.5 percent of their GDP on an average annual basis (up from less than 1 percent of GDP to bridge only their own residual gaps). Even if high-income societies were willing to bear that cost, the world would need a mix of mechanisms for cross-border flows that could include international aid, cross-border debt, assistance from multilateral institutions, and debt relief (including creative debt-for-nature or debt-for-climate swaps). New financial vehicles might need to be designed.

We are reaching a fork in the road

We undertook this exercise to show what is theoretically possible and inform the debate. Regardless of whether countries decide to increase public commitments, this research leads to two important takeaways.

The importance of productivity-driven growth cannot be overstated

Faster growth propels inclusion. Almost 40 percent of the empowerment gap can be closed by baseline growth—and, as noted earlier, just under one extra percentage point of growth reduces the unfilled empowerment gap by more than one percentage point of GDP.

Additionally, growth can give governments more fiscal flexibility. The incremental GDP growth from higher productivity would allow for more than $30 trillion in additional public debt to be incurred globally without raising the 2020 global public debt–to-GDP ratio. At a global level, and specifically for high-income regions, this additional debt capacity exceeds the incremental public support needed to fill the empowerment and net-zero investment gaps. It is a question of whether or not those countries choose to assume that kind of debt, and where to allocate it.

Visionary agendas are more likely to be pursued when the pie is growing and put aside when it is shrinking. 35 Benjamin M. Friedman, The moral consequences of economic growth , Knopf, 2005. While growth can’t overcome every structural challenge, it can create space for new solutions to take root. Although growth in its current form has increased both emissions and inequality in the past, businesses, institutions, and governments can address these externalities more directly.

Higher growth and innovation could bring 600 million more people out of poverty, taking steps on a longer journey toward empowerment.

For developing economies, the prospects for more people to exit poverty are inextricably linked to their ability to grow. These countries would need to double down on productivity, skill development, and technological leapfrogging. 36 See, for example, Reimagining growth in Africa: Turning diversity into opportunity , McKinsey Global Institute, June 2023. They may also need institutional reforms, from clearer legal frameworks for property rights to stronger oversight that prevents leakages of public spending. 37 Realizing property rights , Hernando de Soto and Francis Cheneval, eds., Frank/Wynkin de Worde, 2006. New collaborations may be needed to integrate low-income countries more fully into global flows of trade, finance, technology, and knowledge.

The upside is compelling: higher growth and innovation could lead to some 600 million people moving out of poverty, taking significant steps on their journey toward full economic empowerment. Even in the absence of greater commitments and international transfers, growth and the actions of businesses can unlock real progress that changes lives.

Innovation at scale is critical

Relentlessly focusing on technology development is one of the keys to getting to net zero and lowering the price tag associated with doing so. The significant recent drops in the costs of wind and solar power offer reason for hope. R&D, learning by doing, and scaling up eventually drive costs down. The faster this happens, the lower the risk of households facing higher energy costs.

On the inclusion side, innovation and technology adoption generate demand for higher skills and better jobs. Innovation is also needed to tap efficiency-boosting opportunities and bring down the costs (and prices) of basic needs, from housing and food to education and healthcare.

Innovation is also needed in a broader sense. Lifting minimum living standards and containing climate change would involve sweeping transformations, requiring bold approaches in policy, finance, technology, and industry. The possibilities could include creating new multilateral financing vehicles; integrating low-income countries into global flows of capital and trade in a way that lifts local communities and small businesses; developing sustainable cities with affordable housing; strengthening education and healthcare systems worldwide; and designing effective carbon markets, including incentives for countries to preserve biodiversity and critical carbon sinks.

Progress toward empowerment and net zero would depend on private actors, governments, and NGOs and nonprofits combining their capabilities and expertise—and thinking without limits about how they can contribute to meeting this moment. Regardless of whether countries fully close the gaps, they have real opportunities to build a more stable, prosperous future.

We recognize the scope of these challenges as well as the political realities and the gravitational pull of the status quo. Financing is only one aspect of what would need to be done; achieving consensus and moving toward implementation would be incredibly complex. Countries that decide to take on these generational transformations would need an entirely different magnitude of public–private cooperation. The size of the challenge is not a reason for resignation; it is a call for everyone to roll up their sleeves on what can be done today. Every incremental step forward advances the continuum of progress.

The executive summary of this report was originally published in August 2023. This page has since been updated with the full report download.

Anu Madgavkar is a partner of the McKinsey Global Institute, based in in New Jersey; Sven Smit , based in Amsterdam, chairs MGI. Mekala Krishnan is a partner with MGI, where Kevin Russell and Rebecca J. Anderson are senior fellows. Lola Woetzel and Kweilin Ellingrud are MGI directors, based in Shanghai and Minneapolis, respectively. Tracy Francis , a senior partner in the Sao Paolo office, leads McKinsey’s ESG initiatives.

This report was edited by Lisa Renaud, an MGI executive editor in Los Angeles.

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07 May 2024
Cold Call Podcast

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26 Oct 2022

How Paid Promos Take the Shine Off YouTube Stars (and Tips for Better Influencer Marketing)

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18 Oct 2022

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LGBTQI+ People and Substance Use

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Research has found that sexual and gender minorities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people (LGBTQI+), have higher rates of substance misuse and substance use disorders than people who identify as heterosexual. People from these groups are also more likely to enter treatment with more severe disorders.
People in LGBTQI+ communities can face stressful situations and environments like stigma and discrimination , harassment, and traumatic experiences . Coping with these issues may raise the likelihood of a person having substance use problems.
NIDA supports research to help identify the particular challenges that sexual and gender minority people face, to prevent or reduce substance use disorders among these groups, and to promote treatment access and better health outcomes.

Latest from NIDA

A Plan to Address Racism in Addiction Science

Find more resources on lgbtqi+ health.

Hear the latest approaches in treatment and care from experts in the fields of HIV and SUD in this NIDA video series, “ At the Intersection .”
See the Stigma and Discrimination Research Toolkit from the National Institute of Mental Health.

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Israeli Views of the Israel-Hamas War

Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis see the war very differently

Table of contents.

Views of the Israeli military response against Hamas
Attitudes toward Israel’s war cabinet
Current concerns about the war
Confidence in Biden
Views of how Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war
Who is Biden favoring in the conflict, or is he striking the right balance?
Views of the U.S.
Who Israelis want to play a role in diplomatically resolving the war
Success against Hamas
Israel’s future national security
The future of Gaza
Views of Palestinian leaders
Palestinian statehood and coexistence
Acknowledgments
Methodology

This Pew Research Center analysis covers Israeli attitudes on the Israel-Hamas war, including opinions on how it’s being conducted, the country’s future, Israeli political leaders and the United States’ role in the conflict.

The data is from a survey of 1,001 Israeli adults conducted face-to-face from March 3 to April 4, 2024. Interviews were conducted in Hebrew and Arabic, and the survey is representative of the adult population ages 18 and older, excluding those in East Jerusalem and non-sanctioned outposts. (The survey also did not cover the West Bank or Gaza.) The survey included an oversample of Arabs in Israel. It was subsequently weighted to be representative of the Israeli adult population with the following variables: gender by ethnicity, age by ethnicity, education, region, urbanicity and probability of selection of respondent.

Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and the survey methodology .

A bar chart showing that Israelis are divided over the country’s military response against Hamas in Gaza

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 39% of Israelis say Israel’s military response against Hamas in Gaza has been about right, while 34% say it has not gone far enough and 19% think it has gone too far.

According to the survey, conducted in March and early April, roughly two-thirds of Israelis are also confident that Israel will either probably (27%) or definitely (40%) achieve its goals in the war against Hamas. Still, majorities of Israeli adults are worried about aspects of the ongoing war:

61% say they are extremely or very concerned about the war expanding into other countries in the region.
68% say they are extremely or very concerned about the war going on for a long time.

When it comes to what should happen after the war, there is less consensus. A 40% plurality of Israelis think Israel should govern the Gaza Strip. Smaller shares think Gazans should decide who governs (14%) or would like to see a Palestinian Authority national unity government either with (6%) or without (12%) President Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) in leadership.

Separately, 26% of Israelis think a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully with each other – down from 35% who said the same last year , prior to the war, and about half as many as took that position when the question was first asked in 2013.

Research in the West Bank and Gaza

Pew Research Center has polled the Palestinian territories in previous years, but we were unable to conduct fieldwork in Gaza or the West Bank for our March/April 2024 survey due to security concerns. We are actively investigating possibilities for both qualitative and quantitative research on public opinion in the region and hope to be able to provide more data in the coming months.

These are among the key findings of a new survey of 1,001 Israelis, conducted via face-to-face interviews from March 3 to April 4, 2024.

The survey also asked Israelis about the U.S. role in the conflict. (It was conducted before U.S. President Joe Biden took a tougher stance toward Israel in the wake of an Israeli airstrike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers. And it predates Biden’s declaration that the U.S. would not provide offensive weapons to Israel in the event of a Rafah invasion as well as the subsequent Israeli strikes in Rafah .)

The survey shows:

60% of Israelis disapprove of the way Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war.
41% think Biden is striking the right balance between Israelis and Palestinians. Still, 27% of Israelis say he is favoring Israelis too much, while roughly the same share (25%) say he favors Palestinians too much.
Most Israelis express confidence in Biden to handle world affairs and have a favorable view of the U.S. But ratings of both Biden and the U.S. have fallen at least 10 percentage points since last year. (For more on this, read “How Israelis and Americans view one another and the U.S. role in the Israel-Hamas war.” )

A bar chart showing that a Majority of Israelis want the U.S. to play a major role in diplomatically ending the war

Nonetheless, a large majority (72%) still want the U.S. to play a major role in diplomatically resolving the war – more than say the same about any of the other countries or organizations asked about, including Egypt (45%), Saudi Arabia (29%), Qatar (27%) and the United Nations (24%).

Arab and Jewish Israelis

A dot plot showing that Israeli Arabs and Jews diverge sharply over views of the U.S., Israel-Hamas war and Biden’s handling of it

People across Israeli society perceive the war in vastly different ways, depending on their views of the current leadership, how they identify ideologically, their religious backgrounds and other factors. One of the starkest divides is between Arab and Jewish Israelis:

Arab Israelis are less likely than Jewish Israelis to think Israel will succeed in achieving its war aims (38% vs. 76%) and less optimistic when thinking about the future of the country’s national security (21% vs. 63%).
Israeli Arabs are much more likely than Jews to say the country’s military response has gone too far (74% vs. 4%).
Almost no Israeli Arabs (3%) want Israel to govern the Gaza Strip after the war, while half of Israeli Jews think it should do so. A plurality of Arabs would like the people who live in Gaza to decide who governs (37%), while only 8% of Jews prefer this outcome.
Arab Israelis have much less favorable views of the U.S. than Jewish Israelis do (29% vs. 90%), as well as less confidence in Biden (21% vs. 66%). They are also much more likely to disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war (86% vs. 53%) and to think he favors Israelis too much (86% vs. 11%).
Although a majority of Arabs (63%) want the U.S. to play a major role in diplomatically resolving the war between Israel and Hamas, an even greater share of Jewish Israelis (74%) want this. And roughly two-thirds of Arabs are open to Qatar and Egypt playing a major role, while only about four-in-ten Jews or fewer say the same.
Roughly nine-in-ten Arabs (92%) have a negative view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, compared with around half of Jews (48%). Views of the two other war cabinet members , Benny Gantz and Yoav Gallant, are also divided along ethnic lines. (The survey was conducted before Gantz threatened to leave the war cabinet .)

In many cases, there are also large ideological differences, with Israelis who describe themselves as being on the left generally more critical of Israel’s war response, less optimistic about its success and more critical of the U.S. than those on the right. There also tend to be differences among Israeli Jews based on how religiously observant they are. For more on how we looked at these differences, refer to the box below.

Jewish religious groups in Israel: Haredim, Datiim, Masortim and Hilonim

Nearly all Israeli Jews identify as either Haredi (commonly translated as “ultra-Orthodox”), Dati (“religious”), Masorti (“traditional”) or Hiloni (“secular”). The spectrum of religious observance in Israel – on which Haredim are generally the most religious and Hilonim the least – does not always line up perfectly with Israel’s political spectrum. On some issues, including those pertaining to religion in public life, there is a clear overlap: Haredim are furthest to the right, and Hilonim are furthest to the left, with Datiim and Masortim in between. But on other political issues, including those related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and views of the United States, differences between religious groups do not always mirror those between people at different points on the ideological spectrum. Because of sample size considerations, we combine Haredim and Datiim for analysis in this report.

For more information on the different views of these religious groups, read the Center’s 2016 deep dive on the topic, “Israel’s Religiously Divided Society.”

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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