The Global Economy

Internationalization of Trade and Labor

• As with Japanese autos, American computers and Taiwanese calculators there is an emergence of a “new international division of labor”
• Basically a change in geographical pattern of specialization at the global scale-constantly changing and very dynamic
• Example: movement of textile and shoe production from Indonesia to China

International Division of Labor

• Division of labor has taken on spatial dimensions- some areas come to specialize in certain types of economic activity
• At broad scale : industrialized countries --- manufactured goods while non-industrialized countries --- raw materials
• However this simple pattern no longer exists
• Now much more complex structure involving fragmentation of many processes and their geographical relocation on a global scale