What You Should Know About Globalization and the World Trade Organization

This paper reviews the essentials of economic globalization, as well as the major institution that has recently gotten much of the credit and blame for it, the World Trade Organization (WTO). It first defines globalization, which is just the increasing economic integration of the world economy. It then asks who gains and loses from globalization, drawing primarily upon economic theory to identify its benefits and costs, and who within and among the world's economies get these benefits and costs. That part of the discussion concludes by asking briefly what can and should be done about globalization. The second half of the paper turns to the WTO, which was the focus of so much negative attention at its Seattle meeting in December 1999. The authors try to clarify several misperceptions about what it does, and why. Some groups gain and some lose from the WTO, some simply as a byproduct of its role in facilitating globalization, but others from particular WTO rules and procedures. The paper suggests what might be done to change both the WTO itself and the public's perceptions of it.