The debate on the effects of globalization continues, with one side arguing that it raises living standards and the other that it worsens poverty and inequality. In his new book, Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press), Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, rebuts the arguments that globalization undermines sovereignty, weakens democracy, intensifies inequality, favors "exploitative" multinational corporations, and devastates the environment. Wolf argues that a market economy is the only arrangement capable of generating sustained increases in prosperity, and that the world needs more, and better, globalization.

Comments will be provided by Kristin J. Forbes, member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). She is on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, where she is the Mitsubishi Career Development Chair and Associate Professor of International Management.

The event will be moderated by Raghuram Rajan, Economic Counsellor and Director of the IMF's Research Department.

Why Globalization Works was reviewed in the September 2004 issue of Finance and Development (F&D) magazine. F&D is a quarterly magazine of the IMF.