The third wave of globalisation may be the hardest

Interesting review of The Great Convergence, a new book from economic Richard Baldwin, gives the reviewer at The Economist new perspectives on how to understand the waves of globalisation that have pushed the world’s economy hither and thither over the past 30 years. The basis of Mr Baldwin’s theory is of a series of “unbundlings” that dramatically reduce the cost of trade – it is what the container did to the physical movement of goods and what the internet did to the movement of ideas (consider the cost of sending an email with an attached document to that of sending said document by overnight courier). But the next wave of unbundling, the free movement of people, is proving very difficult, as the recent political upheavals in the UK and US have shown. “In an economist’s dream world, things, ideas and people would flow freely across borders. Reality is stickier, and stuff less mobile—so much so that it trapped humankind’s ancestors into village-level economies. Unless beloved notions catch up with reality, politicians will be pushed to make grave mistakes.”