Firms and Workers in a Globalized World:Larger Markets, Tougher Competition

Globalization is a complex phenomenon involving the mobility of goods, capital, labour and ideas across country borders. From an economic point of view, two waves of globalization have been identified by scholars so far. The first wave materialized between the second half of the Nineteenth century and WWI; the second wave rose after WWII and gained momentum at the end of the Twentieth century before slowing down in the aftermath of the global financial crisis due to renewed protectionist pressures. This collection of essays studies the implications of this second wave of globalization for national economic performance. In doing so, it takes a bottom-up approach, building up the macroeconomic trajectories from the microeconomic effects of globalization on firms and workers. The collected essays highlight the asymmetry of responses across firms and workers between and within industries as well as territories, thus explaining the forces behind the emergence of 'winners' and 'losers' from globalization. The collection shows how state-of-the-art models of international economics and economic geography can be brought to life by addressing several topical issues in the public debate, ranging from regional growth and regional decline to international competition and creative destruction, from innovation patterns to cultural diversity and from immigration to offshoring.