Does globali zation affect human well-being?

Abstract

The prevailing theorizing of globalization's influence of human well-being suggests to assess both the favorable and unfavorable outcomes. This study formulates a dialectical model, adopts a comprehensive globalization measure and uses a three-wave panel data during 1980-2000 to empirically test direct and indirect effects of global flows' human consequences. The outcomes from random effect modeling reveal significant positive impacts of political globalization, whereas economic and social globalization do not generate favorable influences when development level and regional differences are operated as controls. The overall globalization index is found to generate expected favorable influence on an overall human development index.Within developing countries, globalization's human influence was not as significant as in industrial countries, however. Several hypotheses about globalization's potential negative effects through increasing societal instabilities and reducing state power and social spending are not supported in analysis. It is concluded that globalization identified by increased global flows and exchanges contributes rather than hampers progress in human welfare.Key words: globalization, human welfare, state, social structure, panel data 3 Does Globalization Affect Human Well-being?Globalization's impact on economic efficiency and growth outcomes conventionally had drawn most research attention (Dreher, 2006a;Garrett, 2000;Nyahoho, 2001). A recent article published in Social Indicators Research by Sirgy, Lee, Miller and Littlefied (2004) forcefully propose that globalization's potential impact on quality of life (QOL) should receive similar research efforts. Globalization, defined as "the diffusion of goods, services, capital, technology, and people (workers) across national borders" by Sirgy et al. (2004:253), is considered to be a multifaceted diffusion process that produces significant influences in human well-being. This article (Sirgy et al, 2004) proposes 24 theses to demonstrate global linkages and a country's general socio-economic progress, concluding that globalization is a double-bladed phenomenon; that is, both positive and adverse effects generated by

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“…However, the previous literature mainly focus on the macro side effects of globalization through concentrating on national economic factors (Dreher 2006, Rao et al 2011), entrepreneurship (Vining and De Kluijver 2007, life satisfaction (Hessami 2011) and human welfare (Tsai 2007), unionization (Dreher and Gaston 2007), political (Leibrecht et al 2011) and environmental issues (Lamla 2009), military interstate disputes (Choi 2010) etc., or nest the productivity and pass-through literatures spanning industrial organization, international trade, and international macro (De Loecker and Goldberg 2014) with a dearth on the ultimate financial outcomes of firm level effects. Among the highly limited past empirical research in the finance literature, Acheampong et al (2004) examined the profitability adjustment patterns of global firms and tested whether globalization equalizes speeds of profitability adjustment.…”

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