Economic globalization | EPFL Graph Search

Economic globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two others being political globalization and cultural globalization, as well as the general term of globalization. Economic globalization refers to the widespread international movement of goods, capital, services, technology and information. It is the increasing economic integration and interdependence of national, regional, and local economies across the world through an intensification of cross-border movement of goods, services, technologies and capital. Economic globalization primarily comprises the globalization of production, finance, markets, technology, organizational regimes, institutions, corporations, and people. While economic globalization has been expanding since the emergence of trans-national trade, it has grown at an increased rate due to improvements in the efficiency of long-distance transportation, advances in telecommunication, the importance of information rather than physical capital in the modern economy, and by developments in science and technology. The rate of globalization has also increased under the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization, in which countries gradually cut down trade barriers and opened up their current accounts and capital accounts. This recent boom has been largely supported by developed economies integrating with developing countries through foreign direct investment, lowering costs of doing business, the reduction of trade barriers, and in many cases cross-border migration. History of globalization International commodity markets, labor markets, and capital markets make up the economy and define economic globalization. Beginning as early as 6500 BCE, people in Syria were trading livestock, tools, and other items. In Sumer, an early civilization in Mesopotamia, a token system was one of the first forms of commodity money. Labor markets consist of workers, employers, wages, income, supply and demand.

Electricity supply in West Africa: between bilateral agreements and a single regional market

It is necessary to specify that this study is an academic work carried out by a student as part of his master's project. The hypotheses and reasoning made by the student are at the origin of the results obtained. Energy has a crucial role in the economic development of a nation or region. The states of ECOWAS, have decided to come together to unite for this challenge and offer quality services to the population. WAPP, a specialized institution, decides to interconnect networks in order to pool the resources of the electricity market and offers quality access at a competitive price to the population. It is therefore necessary to strengthen production, distribution and transmission capacities to ensure the coordination of electricity exchanges between member countries. This study initially consisted in setting up a methodology explaining the progressive approaches that are applied throughout the project. The strategies for expanding the fleet are each analysed: the self-sufficiency strategy including existing imports and bilateral agreements, the strategy applied by WAPP along with variants involving the share of local production for importing countries. The expansion analysis is done with the support of the PlanElec software. An economic and technical comparison is then made on these two strategies, based on the different costs, the different investments, the installed powers by type and the energy produced. It can be seen that the more the share of local production increases for importing countries, the more interesting the weighted cost of production becomes. But this has a limit demonstrated by the autarkic strategy. Indeed, the countries considered as importers use imports and their weighted cost of production is lower than with a local production share imposed. From a global economic point of view, it is more interesting to rely on the major energy powers of the sub-region. With this study, it has been shown that it is more interesting for countries to turn to an open market policy, dependent on the major powers of the region, although politically no country wishes to be totally dependent on another.

2019

Comprendre la société-Monde par ses enjeux et ses acteurs

Olivier Vilaça

The aim of this thesis is to understand the World as a full-fledged object, namely as the space of a society. This objective is at the same time necessary and problematic. It is necessary because the sudden end of the Cold War entailed the need of new conceptual frameworks to understand the World without the confrontation of two ideological blocs. In parallel, the acceleration of globalization based on transnational and reticular processes profoundly questioned the apportionment of the World in territories and the classical distinction between the national and international spheres. This phenomenon also brought about the emergence of social issues (such as AIDS and climate change) and of non-state actors (such as globalized companies and Non-Governmental Organizations) which cannot be understood without taking into account their global dimension. Faced with these profound changes, it is important to be able to apprehend the World in its global dimension, going beyond its economic aspects. The so-called Global society model, which considers the existence of a global society as a possible option, allows this. However, the methodological nationalism – on which social sciences were based and according to which each society is necessarily linked with a territory, a State and a nation – makes it difficult to use this model to understand the World. Social sciences concepts, theories and methods were developed to conceive the World as a sum of objects (i.e. states, civilizations) and not as a full-fledged object. To go beyond this limit, the approach of this thesis is to apprehend the World through its issues and actors. In particular, I tried to understand if, and how, the involvement of the Lafarge company in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic between 2002 and 2005 contributed to the development of a global society. Through the results of participant observation and an analysis of non-directive interviews with managers from Lafarge who were involved in the development of the company's AIDS program, I identified three main contributions to the emergence of a global society. First, the company contributed to the social construction of the AIDS epidemic as a global issue : in particular, the global approach the company adopted to deal with the AIDS epidemic was notably different from its traditional modus operandi in the field of social responsibility based on a local and decentralized approach. In addition, through its decision to provide its employees, their families and sometimes local communities with antiretroviral treatments in certain circumstances, the company participated in global controversies on cost-effectiveness of triple therapy, use of generic drugs and health as a global public good. Second, Lafarge's AIDS program contributed to reinforce the global dimension of the group, mainly by providing the power of the corporate with legitimacy, but also by contributing to the development of a global identity and by promoting interactions among subsidiaries. Third, the company contributed to building a global political arena, in particular through its interactions with a series of other global actors belonging to the same responsibility community. These interactions created legitimacy, transparency, institutions and norms at the global level, contributing to the emergence of a transnational deliberative arena. This thesis thus shows that it is possible to view the world as a full-fledged object and to overcome methodological nationalism by studying transnational objects, such as a globalized company and a global issue. It shows that Lafarge's involvement in the fight against AIDS contributes to the emergence of a global societal reference with a strong political dimension.

EPFL2009

Electricity supply in West Africa: between bilateral agreements and a single regional market

2019

Comprendre la société-Monde par ses enjeux et ses acteurs

Olivier Vilaça

EPFL2009