Is a Networked World Economy Sustainable?

Economic nationalism and the COVID-19 pandemic have led many to question the future of globalization. Given the fragility of the second wave, this chapter asks whether globalization is cyclical, sustainable only under the most propitious economic or political conditions or whether technological developments, especially the digital revolution, have changed the underlying structure of production in ways that markedly increase the cost of renationalization. Global production networks (GPNs) are discussed as an example of structural change, the emergence of a networked world economy that is both more extensive and intensive than in the past. The chapter concludes that the international economic environment will be unstable, as attempts to restore national independence and disaggregate GPNs run up against the reality of mutual dependence. While we are unlikely to return to independent national markets, the future shape of globalization is uncertain. © 2021 Emerald Publishing Limited.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Unknown venue

• Publication date

  2021-03-04

• Fields of study

  Business, Economics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1108/S1745-886220210000015004
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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