Globalization

Globalization has brought many benefits, yet there is growing contention over how these benefits are shared and increasing recognition that globalized markets require greatly improved global governance. CGD examines the types of rules-based international systems needed to tackle global poverty and create a more equitable, stable, and prosperous global economy.

Making globalization work for poor people is a unifying paradigm for much of CGD’s research and analysis. We seek to increase and improve developing countries’ access to the benefits of an ever more interconnected world. We also strive to influence rich-country policies to lessen protectionism, to provide incentives for technology transfer, and to ease restrictions on the movement of people.

CGD president Nancy Birdsall leads the Center’s work on the politics and economics of globalization. She is co-chair, together with Carol Graham, senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, of the Globalization and Inequality Group (GLIG), an invitation-only working group hosted jointly by CGD and the Brookings Institution. The GLIG serves as a forum for discussion of new research and as a means to inform the debate in the longer term. It meets about four times a year.

The world dramatically experienced some of the negative consequences of globalization during the food price crisis in 2008 and the financial crisis of 2009. The Center’s researchers study how these shocks affected developing countries and how potential consequences can be ameliorated through improved policies and practices.