The Effects of Global Economic Integration on Countries Essay

The Effects of Global Economic Integration on Countries - Essay Example There are several crucial historical pieces of evidence which point to the fact that there existed significant trade and economic relationships among civilizations of the ancient period. Every nation of the world today is engaged in commercial, political, and economic relationships with other nations and it has become the basic strategy for the progress of these nations. In the course of time, such agreements and relationships among world-nations became essential to the economic growth and prosperity of every nation, paving the way for the current international organizations and associations for regional and global agreements. This paper examines, based on empirical research findings, the effects of global economic integration on countries and the world, focusing on both the positive and negative impact of global integration. Global economic integration is an important economic process affecting various nations of the world in the age of globalization and it is essential to comprehend the basic aspects of this process. Thus, economic integration can be defined as the economic process â€Å"whereby markets and production in different countries become increasingly interdependent due to dynamics of trade in goods and services and flows of capital and technology† (Sparrow, Brewster & Harris 17). As Saskia Sassen (2006) maintains, â€Å"a good part of globalization consists of an enormous variety of micro-processes that begin to denationalize what had been constructed as national — whether policies, capital, political subjectivities, urban spaces, temporal frames, or any other of a variety of dynamics and domains’’ (Sassen, 1). Dominick Salvatore explains the theory of economic integration as â€Å"preferential trade arrangements to free trade areas, customs unions, common markets and economic unions’’ (Salvatore 321).