Trade Liberalization, Employment and Global Inequality
Author(s)
Ghose, Ajit K.
Abstract
Trade liberalization — which, together with marked improvements in transport systems and communications/information technologies, has been driving globalization — has suddenly acquired the status of a much-maligned monster. Industrialized nations, which earlier vigorously preached the virtues of free trade, now worry about its vices. Many developing countries feel marginalized in the emerging world economy and wonder whether their fear of free trade was not justified after all. Economists are engaged in (as yet inconclusive) debates on the “rights” and “wrongs” of trade liberalization, and popular opposition to it has grown so much that a crisis of legitimacy looms.
