Globalization: Contents and discontents

  • October 2023

    IZA/FCDO G²LM|LIC - Programme on Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries

    Online

    The IZA/FCDO Programme on Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries (G²LM|LIC) marks the extension of the successful IZA/DFID cooperation, which started as the Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries (GLM|LIC) programme in 2011. The extension aims at building a significant new body of evidence on gender, growth, and labour markets to help shape gender and labour market policies in low-income countries. Collaboration with researchers from low-income countries is strongly encouraged.

    18th IZA & 5th IZA/CREST Conference: Labor Market Policy Evaluation

    Paris, Palaiseau

    The 18th IZA & 5th IZA/CREST Conference will be on the topic of Labor Market Policy Evaluation. This conference is an initiative of the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) in Bonn in cooperation with CREST. The Program Committee invites submissions for about 12 presentations from academic researchers doing program evaluation research on policy issues related to the labor market. Papers that include innovative approaches or methodological contributions are of particular interest.

    IZA/ECONtribute Workshop on the Economics of Education

    Bonn, Germany

    The 7th IZA Workshop on the Economics of Education will be helf on October 19 – 20, 2023, in person at IZA Bonn, Germany. The conference will combine invited presentations with an additional poster session aimed at local researchers. Presentations and keynote are available via Zoom for an external audience.

    Labor Markets and Innovation during Times of War and Reconstruction

    Online

    The Russian aggression against Ukraine has brought incredible destruction in Ukraine and suffering for the Ukrainian population. In the first two months after February 24th, 2022, economic activities came to a standstill for most Ukrainian workers and firms. However, as time passed, the Ukrainian population has shown its resilience and tremendous courage as economic activity slowly but steadily recovered. Like in many prior conflicts, labor markets and economic production have continued to exist in Ukraine.

  • December 2023

    G²LM|LIC & BREAD Conference on Development Economics

    Nairobi, Kenya

    The IZA/FCDO Gender, Growth and Labor Markets in Low-Income Countries Programme (G²LM|LIC) and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) are pleased to announce a joint Conference on Development Economics .The conference will consist of presentations of advanced stage research by senior or junior researchers, and presentations of early stage research by junior researchers.

Globalization: Contents and discontents
January 15, 2019 - January 16, 2019

The World Bank Development Research Group based in Kuala Lumpur is organizing its third international conference, with the theme Globalization: Contents and Discontents. The conference aims to bring together policymakers and academics to discuss the consequences of various aspects of globalization including trade, migration, financial flows, cultural exchanges and the diffusion of ideas. 

For at least twenty years, scholars have debated the pros and cons of globalization.  Jagdish Bhagwati, Anne Krueger, and others have made compelling arguments in favor of reducing trade and migration barriers to improve economic growth, and to have it more equitably distributed.  The sociologist Saskia Sassen in her 1998 collection of essays Globalization and Its Discontents raised doubts, saying that it resulted in “hyper” mobile capital which has changed the nature of sovereignty and heightened the salience of inequality.  Joseph Stiglitz, in his 2002 book with the same title, critiqued how globalization was managed by international financial institutions and argued for policies that gave greater importance to the interests of individual countries.  The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has influentially theorized that globalization is a multi-dimensional process that is not just about financial flows and trade but also about cultural flows and the exchange of ideas.  The historian C.A. Bayly borrowed from this perspective to understand how previous waves of globalization led to the Birth of the Modern World.  David Autor and Pinelopi Goldberg are some of the leading representatives of research that employs careful econometric analysis to examine the effects of globalization on macroeconomic conditions, labor markets, and inequality. More recently, Dani Rodrik has reframed the debate as being about “smart globalization” versus “maximum globalization,” an approach that is cognizant of the winners and losers from the powerful forces unleashed by globalization.  

The goal of this conference is to revisit these and other issues to understand the processes underlying globalization and how they may, or may not, shape a better world.  The conference will be anchored by keynote presentations by noted experts: Shanta Devarajan (Senior Director for Development Economics at the World Bank), William Easterly (Professor of Economics at New York University) and JP Singh (Director of the Center of Cultural Relations at the University of Edinburgh). The organizing committee is headed by Norman Loayza and Vijayendra Rao, Lead Economists with the Development Research Group.

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