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We need to manage the ‘underbelly’ of globalisation

The benefits of globalisation do not come without the need for increased responsibility and cooperation from the international community, according to The Pursuit of Development and Globalization for Development author Ian Goldin.

In conversation with Business Insider’s Paul Colgan,  Professor Goldin said governments needed to ensure that they managed the risks involved with globalisation effectively to mitigate risks, including inequality between those positioned to reap the many rewards of globalisation, and those who were not.

In pursuit of development

“Globalisation accelerates the opportunities as well as the risks,” he said, citing changes to the employment landscape resulting from globalisation.

“Unless we can manage that, I think we’ll see the pushback that we’re seeing, this rising tide against globalisation. That would be a tragedy, because it would not only slow down the prospects of growth and development, but also of dealing with the big problems, like climate change, like pandemics, like cyber attacks. All of these things require more cooperation and more understanding of what other countries are doing and how we’re going to work together, not a withdrawal from this international system,” he said.

Professor Goldin said that changes in employment, resulting from the rise in robotic technology and machine learning, could create a significant divide in opportunity and wealth among those who lived in vibrant urban centres and those in rural areas, such as has occurred in the wheat belt in America or the areas to the north of London in the UK.

Ian Goldin was the founding Director of the Oxford Martin School from September 2006 until September 2016. He is currently Oxford University Professor of Globalisation and Development.

The Pursuit of Development and Globalization for Development are available from Oxford University Press.

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