Cookie Policy

Our website uses cookies to understand content and feature usage to drive site improvements over time. To learn more, review our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Economics in the Global Age

Driving Question: How have our economic networks and systems of production and distribution been affected by the era of intense globalization?

Globalization has knitted our world together into a single global economy. Many of the things we use or eat are made and grown in totally different parts of the world, by people we will never meet. Does this global supply chain and interconnected economy create a world of economic opportunity or inequality? In this lesson, you’ll explore this question as you follow goods across the world.

Learning Objectives

  1. Explain the continuities and changes in the global economy from 1900 to the present.
  2. Use graphic biographies to support, extend, or challenge the overarching narratives from this period.

Vocab Terms:

  • consumption
  • deforestation
  • economic liberalization
  • liberalize
  • monoculture
  • privatize
  • regulation
STEP 1

Opener: Economics in the Global Age

STEP 2

Is the World Flat or Spiky?

You’ve seen how globalization’s impact has been uneven. Now explore the concept of a “flat” vs. “spiky” world—which do you think we live in?

STEP 3

Source Collection: Economics in the Global Age

Explore sources that examine economic changes during the late twentieth century around the world: from China to Chile, from Western Europe and the United States, to Southeast Asia. We recommend using the Quick-Sourcing Tool to help you analyze these sources.

STEP 4

Making Claims: Globalization

Practice your claim- and counterclaim-making skills while also exploring the complex topic of the environmental impact of globalization.

STEP 5

Rise of China

China took an economic “great leap forward” during the twentieth century—but has new wealth created new problems?

STEP 6

Global China into the Twenty-first Century

There is no doubt that China is a modern superpower and a hub of globalization, under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party. But what does that actually mean for the Chinese people?

Global China into the 21st Century External link

Modern, globalized China provides its citizens with great economic growth and social stability, but at the cost of some key freedoms. How do these choices work?

Key Ideas

As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
STEP 7

Graphic Biography: Hua Guofeng

Was the former Chinese Premier Hua Guofeng responsible for massive economic change in China? Or was he perhaps just lucky to govern in a period when global and national trends were shifting? Explore those questions in the graphic biography below.

STEP 8

Closer: Economics in the Global Age

Dollar Street imagines a world where everyone lives on the same street and the houses are ordered by income: the poorest people live at one end, and the richest live at the other end. Explore this world and consider the differing impacts of globalization.

Extension Materials
Checkmark Alert Banner
Deepen your understanding of the impacts of globalization on the global economy through the case study of Bangalore.
...

Bangalore: City of High Tech

Bangalore in India is a city that encompasses both the positive and negative aspects of globalization.