Global Economy

Abstract

The important conceptual term “global economy” captures existing economic and social relationships. The debate over the historical existence of a or the global economy began in the 1970s, when sociologists, political economists, and economists critically examined the then dominant conceptual framework of modernization theory . The term “global economy” is most closely associated with the rise of theories and practices conceptualized as globalization . There are four predominant theoretical frameworks in the post‐World War II period that deal with the idea of a global economy: modernization theory, dependency theory, world‐systems theory, and globalization theory. Each is rooted in the empirical reality of the global economies that existed as they were formulated, and each is heavily influenced by larger theoretical frameworks.