E conomic C onsequences While everything may not be known about the economic facets of globalisation, this particular dimension shapes a large part of the content and direction of contemporary debates surrounding globalisation. A part of the problem has to do with defining economic globalisation itself. The mention of economic globalisation draws our attention immediately to the role of international institutions like the IMF and the WTO and the role they play in determining economic policies across the world. Yet, globalisation must not be viewed in such narrow terms.
Economic globalisation involves many actors other than these international institutions. A much broader way of understanding of economic globalisation requires us to look at the distribution of economic gains, i.e. who gets the most from globalisation and who gets less, indeed who loses from it. What is often called economic globalisation usually involves greater economic flows among different countries of the world.
Some of this is voluntary and some forced by international institutions and power ful countries. As we saw in the examples at the beginning of this chapter, this flow or exchange can take various forms: commodities, capital, people and ideas. Globalisation has involved greater trade in commodities across the globe; the restrictions imposed by © Milt Priggee, Cagle Cartoons Inc.