Reflection Paper 1 (Globalization and the World Economy) In Peter Dicken’s, Global Shift: Mapping the changing contours of the world economy, the book starts off with defining globalization. Dicken then explains how our global economic map is developed and shaped by our past histories and the importance of TNC (transnational corporations). He also discusses the once well know dominator and the main force of our world’s economy. Dickens demonstrates that events such as the aftermath of World War II were thought to create “war-damaged economies throughout the world,” however; there was a generated shocking economic growth (36). The levels of growth during this period was identified as the “golden age,” but it eventually ended because of the varied change in annual growth rates (36). Another concern Dicken brought up was the difference in growth between FDI and trade measuring TNC. The outcome of the Second World War has shown that FDI was an essential part of our financial development. This theory of interconnectedness indicates that our economy has changed “from trade to FDI” (37).
One of the issues Dicken builds his arguments around is one of his considered main “characteristics of global economic growth,” which is TNC, an interconnected process (36). Interconnect means equally linked or connected. He believes this is one of the major explanations of how the economic map has been reformed. Dicken demonstrates that because these transnational corporations constitute most of the world’s trades of goods and services (two thirds), they can be greatly identified as dominators of control to the global economy by managing production systems all over most of the world (38). Dicken raises another issue of the United States once standing as the worlds “pre-eminent force in the global economy” and now has been decreasing in power because its competitors have grown (41). Merchandise percentages in other countries have grown a bit drastically compared to the US, which has lead, US to be a sort of “last resort to the global economy” (42). The once well handled hierarchy positions the US has taken in trade production has sadly dropped to low fractions of power.
I think Peter Dicken does a great job at getting issue points across because they support significant hypothetical opinions. He seems to be stating facts supporting his arguments, which influences me to agree with what he is saying, however, I think most of his points need further exploration. He doesn’t present real life examples that would further support his arguments. Dicken intends to educate his audience with what globalization truly is and the growth of our world’s economy. Real life examples would have helped Dicken get his point across since his book is extremely heavy in reading.