From the acclaimed author of The Box, a new history of globalization
that shows us how to navigate its future
Globalization has profoundly shaped the world we live in, yet its rise
was neither inevitable nor planned. It is also one of the most
contentious issues of our time. While it may have made goods less
expensive, it has also sent massive flows of money across borders and
shaken the global balance of power. Outside the Box offers a fresh and
lively history of globalization, showing how it has evolved over two
centuries in response to changes in demographics, technology, and
consumer tastes.
Marc Levinson, the acclaimed author of The Box, tells the story of
globalization through the people who eliminated barriers and pursued new
ways of doing business. He shows how the nature of globalization changed
dramatically in the 1980s with the creation of long-distance value
chains. This new type of economic relationship shifted manufacturing to
Asia, destroying millions of jobs and devastating industrial centers in
North America, Europe, and Japan. Levinson describes how improvements in
transportation, communications, and computing made international value
chains possible, but how globalization was taken too far because of
large government subsidies and the systematic misjudgment of risk by
businesses. As companies began to account properly for the risks of
globalization, cross-border investment fell sharply and foreign trade
lagged long before Donald Trump became president and the coronavirus
disrupted business around the world.
In Outside the Box, Levinson explains that globalization is entering a
new era in which moving stuff will matter much less than moving
services, information, and ideas.