1998 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Openness and Within-Country Inequality
Authors : Susan Horton, Ravi Kanbur, Dipak Mazumdar
Published in: Contemporary Economic Issues
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Included in: Professional Book Archive
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Increasing globalization is a fact of life. Dramatic reductions in transportation and communication costs, and colossal increases in capital flows, are knitting together the world economy as never before. Although some of the recent trends are not dramatically different from the past,2 there are some new patterns, such as the marked rise in manufacturing exports by a group of developing countries in East Asia. Should other developing countries, particularly those in Africa, go against the grain of this globalization, or should they work towards complementing it? While resisting global trends is most likely a futile activity, the issue of complementary policies is important because, in our view, closer integration of the world economy poses significant tradeoffs — while it holds out the prospect of higher growth it also carries dangers of increasing inequality in the short to medium run, particularly because of the interaction of globalization and new technology with existing skill and educational inequalities.