Richard Baldwin – The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization

“Between 1820 and 1990, the share of world income going to today’s wealthy nations soared from twenty percent to almost seventy. Since then, that share has plummeted to where it was in 1900. As Richard Baldwin explains, this reversal of fortune reflects a new age of globalization that is drastically different from the old. In the 1800s, globalization leaped forward when steam power and international peace lowered the costs of moving goods across borders. This triggered a self-fueling cycle of industrial agglomeration and growth that propelled today’s rich nations to dominance. That was the Great Divergence. The new globalization is driven by information technology, which has radically reduced the cost of moving ideas across borders…” [Publisher’s book website]

Reviews / Comments

Book review by Diane Coyle, November 2016

Book review by Bradford Delong, March 2017

Book review by The Economist, November 2016

Book review by Juliet Webster in The Times, January 2017

Book review by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, December 2016