Pax Mercatoria: Globalization as a Second Chance at ‘Peace for Our Time’

Abstract:     
This Essay completes a scholarly cycle in which I have defended free trade and international economic cooperation against charges that globalization will harm the environment and drain jobs from the high-wage economies of western Europe, Japan, and the United States. The demolition of geographic and social barriers since the end of the Cold War has delivered not only material wealth but also physical tranquility, political stability, and personal freedom to vast portions of the world's population. The path to peace lies today, as it did in 1938, not in a retreat to obsolete notions of local sovereignty but in a commitment to lawmaking on a global scale.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 35

Keywords: globalization, sovereignty, international law

JEL Classification: K33

Accepted Paper Series