Scholars indicate the increasing economic integration and interdependence of national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, service, technology, and capital. It can be said that globalization is the door to global resources that opens up to the international market.
Economic and financial globalization and the expansion of world trade have brought substantial benefits to countries around the world. But the current financial crisis has put globalization on hold, with capital flows reversing and global trade shrinking. There are countless indicators that illustrate how goods, capital, and people, have become more globalized.
• The value of trade (goods and services) as a percentage of world GDP increased from 42.1 percent in 1980 to 62.1 percent in 2007.
• Foreign direct investment increased from 6.5 percent of world GDP in 1980 to 31.8 percent in 2006.
• The stock of international claims (primarily bank loans), as a percentage of world GDP, increased from roughly 10 percent in 1980 to 48 percent in 2006.
• The number of minutes spent on cross-border telephone calls, on a per-capita basis, increased from 7.3 in 1991 to 28.8 in 2006.
• The number of foreign workers has increased from 78 million people (2.4 percent of the world population) in 1965 to 191 million people (3.0 percent of the world population) in 2005.
There is a long debate about the effects of globalization, as the most common