The Rise of the Globalization Age

Abstract

Abstract The chapter aims at analysing world industrial development in the course of its last phase, tracing a course in the midst of the many issues that have contributed to making the last decades so tumultuous. Facts are set within a framework that can be divided into four intertwined blocks. First, a retrospective analysis of the emergence of a new paradigm after the fall of what has been called the Golden Age of advanced economic systems. Second, a discussion of the determinants of manufacturing development in the so-called emerging economies. Third, a measure of the integration of manufacturing systems at the global level through the creation of international value chains and the (related) expansion of direct investment flows. Fourth, a discussion of the origins and the main implications of the crisis that struck the world economy at the end of the long expansion cycle in 2008. The goal of the chapter is not to treat all these issues exhaustively, but simply to weave them into a comprehensive view of the paradigm that has shaped the last phase of world industrial development, which will be called the Globalization Age.