Technology, Globalisation and Poverty
Abstract
Book Review Reviewed by: Robert Vinaja, University of Texas-Pan American, fbvinaja@coba.panam.edu Jeffrey James Edward Elgar, 2002, 14 7 pages ISBN 1 84064 484 2 The globalization trend and the growing "digital divide" are two issues of major significance in our time. This remarkable book provides a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical and empirical interactions between globalization, technology and poverty. Jeffrey James studies the effect of information technology on patterns of globalization and investigates how such patterns can be changed to reduce the growing global divide between developed and developing nations. The first three chapters of the book are concerned with exploring the nature of the mechanisms through which information technology influences globalization and with examining the disparate outcomes of these processes in various parts of the world economy. The author argues in Chapter 1 that many, if not most, of the impulses propagated by the various forms of information technology on international trade and foreign investment can be understood with reference to the concept of transaction costs (all the costs incurred by the transactions parties in reaching an agreement to trade with one another). Jeffrey James tries to demonstrate that the mechanisms through which information technology influences globalization involve