Globalization, and more in particular economic integration, presents both opportunities and costs. Furthermore, greater economic openness, foreign direct investment, and transfer of technologies offer potential opportunities for economic growth. Free trade allows specialization between different regions, allowing them to produce according to their own comparative advantages. Moreover, it also expands the consumption alternatives of citizens by providing them increased the opportunities to purchase goods and services from other countries. In this respect, it is very important to keep in mind that international trade is not a zero-sum game where several countries are winners and others are losers.
Other than that, economic globalization has provided opportunities for developing countries in which enlarge the size of their markets for export and attracts foreign capital, which can help the development. Foreign investment is beneficial to a transfer of technologies and know-how, which will increases the productivity. Besides that, another positive that will effect of globalization is greater competitionbetween firms, which will benefits consumers who have entrance to products at increasingly lower prices. Those who have gain the most from free trade in both developed and developing countries are very often the poorest since they can purchase goods at more reasonable prices, and hence have a higher standard of living. In this sense, free trade can be seen as an indirect way to decrease the poverty.
Unfortunately, until now developed countries have not pick up their protective barriers in many crucial sectors for developing countries. In fact, while "integrating with the world economy is a powerful vehicle for growth and poverty reduction in developing countries, … it would be still more powerful if the rich countries further increased the openness of their own economies” (Stern, 2000). We should recognize that many sectors, like textiles and agriculture, which might provide real new opportunities for developing countries and have not been liberalized. Another part of great concern is connected to intellectual property rights, and the use of anti-dumping practices, which look like to discriminate against the producers in the developing countries. Moreover, while it is true that globalization carries many opportunities in its trail, it is also true that it has costs for particular sectors of the population in countries that are integrating into the world economy.
