Globalisation is a wildly popular subject of discussion in today’s literature. It is a phenomenon which has many different dimensions, which include economic, cultural, environmental and political issues. There is a wide spectrum of different opinions about its origins, present effects and future outcomes. Moreover, almost every globalisation aspect is a subject of a very heated academic debate. The topic is so debatable that there is no one conventional definition of globalisation. Nevertheless, it can be narrowly defined as the international integration of markets in goods, services and capital. Thomas Friedman defines globalisation as “that loose combination of free trade agreements, the Internet and the integration of financial markets that is erasing borders and uniting the world into a single, lucrative, but brutally competitive marketplace.” Whereas Dicken defines globalisation as “a more advanced and complex form of internationalization which implies a degree of functional integration between internationally dispersed economic activities” (Dicken, P. 2003).

There are many different ways to approach the issue of globalisation. Most generally the academic debate on the topic of globalisation can be divided into three distinct camps: hyperglobalists (Ohmae, Friedman, Giddens), sceptics (Hirst and Thompson, Ruigrok and van Tulder, Sachs and Warner) and realists (Dicken). While hyper-globalists accept globalisation as a fact and generally perceive it as a beneficial process, sceptics argue that the characteristics of the phenomenon have already been seen at other moments in history and that it is largely negative in its effects. Realists hold the middle ground between these opposing views and support the idea that benefits can arise from globalisation, however it is also critical to establish some sort of regulation. Nevertheless, before considering any theoretical frameworks or any high level academic analysis, I would like to think about a ‘hard’ socio-economic evidence on which most of the above thinkers arguments are based.