IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/ucbewp/233423.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The World Over the Next Twenty-five Years: Global Trade Liberalization, and the Relative Growth of Different Regions

Author

Listed:
  • Frankel, Jeffrey

Abstract

This paper examines prospective developments for the next 25 years under four headings. I. The Economic Size of Different Countries. We begin by examining the current GDP rankings, and the process whereby various countries have closed the gap in per capital income with the United States over the last 50 years. We then turn to the recent literature on convergence, factor accumulation, and total productivity growth, in explaining the superior record of the East Asian countries (including the Krugman-Young claim that mere factor accumulation explains the entire miracle, and the Summers-Easterly claim that mere chance does), before venturing predictions. II. Increases in International Trade: Will Globalization Continue? Some have concluded that countries are now so open and integrated internationally that such geographical encumbrances as borders and distance no longer play a role. If a level of perfect integration had indeed already been achieved, one might expect that over the next 25 years trade would no longer continue to grow more rapidly than income. Such a conclusion would be incorrect, however. It follows that trade will continue to grow more rapidly than income in the future. The reasons are not only the obvious ones of declining costs of transportation and communication and declining trade barriers, but also rising incomes in formerly-poor countries. III. The Impact of Trade: Will the U.S, and Europe Be Endangered by Widening Deficits? The paper forecasts that the problem of the Japan-U.S. trade imbalance will probably vanish by the year 2020, as the result of financial implications rather than of deliberate trade policies. We then discuss the trend in the trade balances of Europe and the U.S., vs. Developing Countries, and the debate on the causes of stagnation in demand for labor. Trade does not appear to be the major cause of stagnation. IV. Bilateral Patterns: Who Will Trade with Whom? Clearly, trade will grow the most rapidly where economies grow the most rapidly, especially among NICs in East Asia and elsewhere. But we also look at the effects of distances, common languages, political federations and their dissolution, preferential trading arrangements, and currency unions.

Suggested Citation

  • Frankel, Jeffrey, 1996. "The World Over the Next Twenty-five Years: Global Trade Liberalization, and the Relative Growth of Different Regions," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers 233423, University of California-Berkeley, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:ucbewp:233423
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.233423
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/233423/files/cal-cider-c096-061.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.233423?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gimet, Celine, 2007. "Conditions necessary for the sustainability of an emerging area: The importance of banking and financial regional criteria," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 317-335, October.
    2. J. Bradford DeLong, 1996. "Cross-country variations in national economic growth rates: the role of \\"technology\\"," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 40(Jun), pages 127-172.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    International Relations/Trade;

    JEL classification:

    • F01 - International Economics - - General - - - Global Outlook
    • O00 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - General - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:ucbewp:233423. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debrkus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.