BIS Review 21/2008  1  higher quality of life it brings about, with very similar words as those Keynes used almost a century ago to describe the heydays of the “liberal international economic order” before World War I.
2 On the other hand, the sweeping and relentless demise of physical and manmade barriers to the mobility of goods and services, ideas and people, is criticised because it supposedly also does away with necessary protections for disadvantaged workers and households in poor and rich countries, the environment and cultural diversity. All these developments have put globalisation at the centre of international policy debates.