Check Out The Great Convergence Conceived By Richard Baldwin Offered In Book

has an interesting theory on globalization and if things play out the way he predicts, governments would do well to take his policy recommendations.
It is a good historic account of the evolution of globalization and the forces that drive it, Richard Baldwin provides a framework for understanding globalization as an "unbundling" between consumption and production, and how technological innovations lifted three important constraints: the cost of moving goods, the cost of moving ideas, and the cost of moving people.


The first wave of globalization was sparked by innovations made during the Industrial Revolution and led to decreased costs in moving goods, leading to industrialization in the North and deindustrialization in the South.
The socalled "Great Divergence" occurred because the high costs of moving ideas trapped industrial innovations in the North, The second wave of globalization occurred in thes ands as improvements in ICT allowed for more knowledge transfers from the North to the South.
As such, countries like China and India were able to plug into global supply chains, Their share of manufacturing increased, while those of the G, the early beneficiaries of globalization, decreased, However, clustering still occurred because trade bumped up against the third constraint: the high cost of moving people, Baldwin projects that advances in telerobotics and telepresence will spark the third wave of globalization leading to new winners and losers.


It is an excellent book that provides a historical overview on trade and a lucid review of trade theory.
However, I feel that Baldwin focuses to much on technology as a driver of trade and not enough on policy.
Political constraints can reverse globalizing forces, such as what we are seeing now with the rise of populism, Still, I enjoyed reading this, Recommending reading a bit of Acemoglu to complement, This book is sort of a "Guns, Germs, and Steel" of globalization a bit repetitive, and very nerdy, It was a text for our doctoral program, But approachable for nonacademics and worth understanding, conceptually, Baldwin has here written a solid up to date book, as of, on globalization, Although he seems to have tried hard to avoid it, Baldwin falls into the trap of spending too long on the past.
Still that's an all too common error for such books and other authors have done much worse in that regard.

Spending thehours it takes you to read this book brings you reasonably up to date on the academic view of globalization.
Assuming that's what you want and you can stand basic history on the subject, read Baldwin's book,.The concluding remark summarizes the content of the book perfectly: "Things have changed so much that not even the future is what it used to be.
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The book brings the story on why todays globalisation differs from our parents' globalization, Lowering trade costs caused a first worldwide unbundling, which triggered a drop in the transfer of ideas and knowledge through ICT as basis for a second unbundlin.
In the future, the virtual presence revolution being the drop of costs for physical presence will cause a further natural evolution of the manufacturing market, but cause a true revolution in the service sector.


Laced with both reallife and fictive examples, the book is a pageturner and brings added value chapter after chapter.
Globalism has given us the rising billions, Human existence has improved more fromto present than the previous,years,

Baldwin has somehow understated how fasts of millions at a time are being lifted out of poverty and how and where lives are being improved.
This book is entirely focused on manufacturing, which I find to be literally the least interesting aspect of globalization.


Globalization is not just moving factories around, Years ago I met a fellow American in South Korea at a club who teaches English, Since then I have moved to Germany, He moved to Russia for a few years and has more recently moved to Estonia, He visited us in Europe during his last move where he explained to me he teaches English to Chinese clients online.
He uses his earnings to bus around the Eurasian continent exploring UNESCO sites and national parks, It doesn't matter where he is sitting on the Earth's surface to make money, It doesn't matter where his clients are, He can make money while bussing to his next country, This new freedom for all of us is globalization, The International Space Station represents globalization, As I write this inwe're about to launch a woman to Mars, We're building out the technology to send a colony to Mars, This is globalization. This book is entirely focused on moving factories around,

We should remember in the last fewyears farming has gone from overof the human population to now well underof the population, and falling.
While this falling percent has grown continually more productive, Manufacturing in recent decades has had a similar stunning fall, One city in China can produce a billion iPhones for all of the people of India in a stunningly short time.
Ever better and cheaper phones for everyone are great, Yet, we do not need every city on Earth producing a billion iPhones, Manufacturing jobs will not the future for most people, This is entirely ok, the great convergence is not a function of just manufacturing, Yet another book on the affects of globalization Yes, I'm afraid so, But this one is worth a gander, Baldwin's book, The Great Convergence, elucidates how things are made in business today, how information and communication technology has radically changed production, and, lastly, what this now means for jobs.
If you instinctively imagine this to be a jeremiad, as most books on globalization and jobs are, you're mostly correct.
Baldwin declares without equivocation that the hoary mercantile view of economics not only is quite dead, but can inflict substantial damage through its misconceptions of the present world economy.
The old view that nations sponsor and nurture their internal businesses much like their military so its products can be imagined, constructed, and sold across borders like an offensive conquest has become a thing of the past.
The nation has been quietly removed from the economic battlefield, often without it even knowing as much, Baldwin views the dynamic of the economy as a process of bundling and unbundling, Production and consumption were once necessarily joined at the hip by force of man's circumstances, Innovations in travel allowed for its unbundling, Rebundling occurred as a result of advances in information amp communication technology, He details the history of this process, perhaps with too much repetition, A minor complaint could be directed at this book for its repetition, The The Great Convergence's chapters each have a bit of the feel of the single essay and material is returned to again and again as the reader moves on to the next one.
Baldwin claims our presentday globalization is very distinct from the old version, Old version basically utilized a Northsouth dichotomy which entailed an industrialized north using its advanced development in manufacturing goods for selling to less developed southern neighbors in exchange for primary materials, and perhaps light goods.
Manufacturing and trade in goods across borders was still relatively simple, This lopsided dichotomy allowed for workers of the "north"Gto be paid a premium for their labor, In response to this, some northern manufacturers would seek to utilize the cheap southern labor available by moving factories to such fiscally salubrious locations where cheap labor ran free and plentiful.
Mostly this outsourcing only encompassed easily performed tasks of production, assemblage and its like, This was a bundling of low wage labor with low skill work, An "add labor and stir" approach, Because of this, countries that sought patronage from northern businesses generally did so with the end goal of eventually substituting their own national product after enough northern knowhow had been accumulated.
Baldwin goes over some historical success and failure stories of this strategy, With the emergence of information communication technologyICT, however, thinking about the economy in narrow nationalistic terms can severely penalize a nation.
Baldwin explains that the revolution of goods efficiently and expediently crossing borders has been surpassed by the revolution of complex information passing across borders, thus allowing "southern" developing states to become part of a Global Value Chain where goods and parts can pass accords borders many times in coordination with the needs and profitseeking of the northern corporations.
Parts of a product can be made in Mexico, enhanced in Taiwan or wherever, then shipped to China for final assemblage, from where it then may enter the United States or European marketplace to be sold.
Each international stop in the chain adds value to a product efficiently and inexpensively until it's ready to be sold.
Cheap labor has now been bundled with relatively high skill jobs created through transfer of knowhow information across borders.
A country fixed upon creating its own rival product can find itself completely shut out from these global value chains, according to Baldwin, thereby damning it to economic insignificance in today's global marketplace.
Countries already in the club have multiple advantages over those who are not, Success at selling your country for its cheap labor, amenable customs practices for clients, and readiness to meet the needs through construction of physical plants as well as honoring corporate property rights will undoubtedly attract more business, such as China has managed to do in the past two decades.
Spillover of technical knowhow is possible for club member nations, though virtually impossible for those outside it, And, of course, rising income for those affected workers of chain countries prompt local development and allied internal business growth.
Baldwin goes into the "smile" curve a bit, stating a reduction in the cost of manufacturing which outsourcing allows actually creates higher paying jobs in Gcountries.
Money that would otherwise be spent on expensive and budgetaryinefficient labor can be allocated instead to R amp D, innovation, and service related marketing of an end product in a "northern" country.
Baldwin insists that due to the ICT revolution certain jobs will undoubtedly be gone for good in Gcountries.
Those companies which refuse to outsource will find themselves likely out of business or at least noncompetitive against rivals.
Baldwin hints that even manufacturing jobs overseas may be a thing of the past ifD printing ever becomes inexpensive.
If it were to reach that point, Baldwin warns, people will basically assist machines rather than the reverse, A disturbing thought for the future, Baldwin predicts the next great revolution will be one that allows people to travel quickly and efficiently across borders.
Baldwin plumps for the coming of telepresence through either holograms or even robots, where meetings can occur and actions can be performed though participants exist across separate borders.
One item that is conspicuously absent in Baldwin's book is the big F word: Finance, It's complete absence in Baldwin's book feels eccentric, though, admittedly, it is generally aside from Baldwin's subject matter, This is basically a book about how widgets are made in the today's world marketplace, and only pending the next revolution.
Before, nobody was foreseeing a global pandemic, After, nobody would doubt the third unbundling, which was a speculative conclusion mentioned in this book, is happening in most countries.


Hence, this is a wellwritten book for reminding us of what happened in the past that led to today's world situation.
It's also a good reminder for all of us to think about the future ASAP and get ready for it.
Anyone who has the ambition to participate in an intelligent discussion of how globalisation has unfolded over the last two decades and what it implies for both developed and developing countries, should read this book.
Data driven look on the history of globalization, A framework of how to think about globalization is also presented, Globalization is seen as a process of separatinggeographically at first the production and consumption of goods, The Industrial and the IT revolution are refracted through this mindset,

I loved the whole structure of interpreting data gt building a hypothesis/theory gt looking at the history through the lens of the new hypothesis/theory.
Regardless of the insufficient consideration of cultural aspects and the advances of artificial intelligence it does consider automation and remote intelligence , this book was very insightful about globalization's history and economics.
Este libro de Richard Baldwin bien podría ser la mejor lectura para entender la globalización durante los últimos dos siglos.
La premisa del libro es que la globalización puede entenderse como un proceso de tres pasos, El primero al relajar los costos de transporte de mercancias facilito el comercio entre los países, El resultado de este proceso es la gran divergencia entre las economías avanzadas y las economías en desarrollo.
El segundo paso ocurre al relajar el costo de mover ideas entre distintos países facilito que surgieran las cadenas globales de valor y de esta forma se combinara la tecnología avanzada de los países desarrollados con los bajos salarios de los países en desarrollo.
El resultado de esta combinación es la gran convergencia,

Baldwin explica de forma clara y amigable todos las implicaciones que los cambios en la globalización han traido y hace algunas conjeturas sobre que podría ocurrir en un tercer paso, cuando los costos de mover personas entre países bajen por una mezcla de avances tecnologicos en las tecnologías de la información y la transformación de la manufactura por el advenimiento de la inteligencia artificial.


Es un gran libro que realmente vale mucho la pena para pensar en el futuro en el contexto del presente y del pasado.
Con mucha razón fue considerado uno de los mejores libros de, .