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Globalisation

How the world economy is becoming more interconnected.

📊 Year 9 🌐 International Economics ⭐ ★★

Globalisation: One World Economy

The smartphone in your pocket was designed in California, its chips made in Taiwan, assembled in China, with minerals from the Congo, sold to you in Britain. This web of connections — countries, firms, and workers intertwined across borders — is globalisation. It is the defining economic trend of the past 50 years.

🕸️ The Spider's Web: Globalisation has woven economies together like a spider's web. One thread breaks (a pandemic shuts Chinese factories) and reverberations spread instantly — UK carmakers halt production, British retailers face empty shelves. The web creates efficiency and interdependence, but also vulnerability.

✅ Benefits

Lower prices, greater choice, economic growth for developing nations, spread of technology and knowledge, job creation in export industries.

⚠️ Costs

Structural unemployment in uncompetitive industries, exploitation of cheap labour, tax avoidance by TNCs, cultural homogenisation, environmental damage.

🏢 TNCs

Transnational corporations (Apple, Shell, Toyota) move capital and production globally seeking lowest costs. They bring investment but may repatriate profits, avoiding local taxes.

🌐 Driving Forces

Technology (internet, shipping containers), trade liberalisation (WTO, trade agreements), financial deregulation, and migration of ideas and people.

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📊 Interactive Economic Diagram

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💡 How to read economic diagrams: Always label axes (Price on Y-axis, Quantity on X-axis for most diagrams). Shifts represent changes in non-price factors; movements along a curve represent price changes. Equilibrium is where curves intersect.

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💡 Exam Tip: Show all working in economics calculations. Use the correct formula, substitute values clearly, state units, and interpret your result in economic terms.