Why Globalization Works

ECONOMIC FORUMS AND INTERNATIONAL SEMINARS

Wednesday, September 22, 2004, 2:30-4:00 p.m.
IMF Auditorium (Visitors enter via the IMF Center)
720 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C.

Transcript of the proceedings.

This Economic Forum is free and open to the public.

Please note that due to enhanced security arrangements:

1. An RSVP is required: EventsRSVP@imf.org or (202) 623-4129.

2. A picture ID is required to enter the Fund. Persons and bags will be screened. Please arrive 10-15 minutes early to allow for possible delays in entering the building due to these additional measures.

3. Only IMF/World Bank Staff ID holders should enter through the main 700 19th St. entrance. If you do not hold a staff ID, please enter through the IMF Center, 720 19th St. N.W. Washington DC, entrance.

The debate on the effects of globalization continues, with one side arguing that it raises living standards and the other that it worsens poverty and inequality. In his new book, Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press), Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, rebuts the arguments that globalization undermines sovereignty, weakens democracy, intensifies inequality, favors "exploitative" multinational corporations, and devastates the environment. Wolf argues that a market economy is the only arrangement capable of generating sustained increases in prosperity, and that the world needs more, and better, globalization.

Comments will be provided by Kristin J. Forbes, member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). She is on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, where she is the Mitsubishi Career Development Chair and Associate Professor of International Management.

The event will be moderated by Raghuram Rajan, Economic Counsellor and Director of the IMF's Research Department.

Why Globalization Works was reviewed in the September 2004 issue of Finance and Development (F&D) magazine. F&D is a quarterly magazine of the IMF.