Measuring Global Political Economy

Abstract

The global political economy is a field of study that has its roots in international relations. The augmentation of world economic transactions after the collapse of Bretton Woods System in the 1970s created the need for a new field of study, in order to explain the interdependence between politics and economics at the international level. Decisive factors for the formulation of the global economy such as nation-states, international markets, multinational companies and international organisations created multiplied interactions, such as the emergence of economic globalisation. The need to understand these interactions, and the two oil crises of the 1970s, were the fuel for the speedy development of the discipline of global political economy as an interpretative tool of the global economy. The evolution of economic globalisation was originally analysed in qualitative terms. But studying these multiple interactions only in qualitative terms was not easy. In recent years, a number of indicators were developed, in order to facilitate quantitative analysis in terms that were hitherto discussed only under the quality prism. The OECD, for example, has developed indicators in order to measure the implications of economic globalisation. The aim of this article is to study the main indices that are trying to measure different aspects of the evolution of the global economy. This study is going to show whether these indicators can have a predictive utility or mainly an interpretive capability of certain facts of the global political economy. The article is going to focus on the following countries: the United States, Germany, and China for the last decade (2008–2018), on the basis of the available data. The analysis of the last decade will also reveal the implications of the global economic crisis.