The globalisation of business and economics

This paper explores some of the processes and debates about globalisation, especially about economic and financial globalisation. It suggests that while economics has been slow to respond to its development, there are at least two ways economics can contribute to the globalisation debate. First, economics has been important in questioning the idea of a new era, showing that, if there is anything in the term globalisation, it is part of a much longer process than the last twenty or thirty years. And economics has had its own experience with proclaiming "new eras", and there are lessons to be learnt from understanding why these notions proved to be illusory. The paper also suggests that the globalisation debate has been forcing economics to revisit many questions that were thought to have been "solved" half a century or more ago. In doing so, economists will find that they can also benefit greatly from the insights developed by earlier debates and other fields of research. The paper begins by discussing the ways other branches of social science have developed discussions of globalisation and the response of economists. It suggests reasons why the development of globalisation has represented such a crisis for economics. It then presents some stylised facts of globalisation, and possible ways around the paradoxes it raises. But there are still important things that economics can contribute to discussions about globalisation. Indeed, there are important lessons from earlier developments in economics that can show the pitfalls for current research on globalisation.