ABSTRACT
The 'World Economy', according to the concepts of Wallerstein (1974) and Braudel (1985), obviously does not carry today's date; however, if the debate on reciprocal relationships between 'local' and 'global' has taken centre stage today, this is not only because of the nature and broadness of the globalization process acting on the economy and society, but above all, in our opinion, because the preponderant direction of relations seems to be inverse (Reich 1993): if in the past the process was seen as 'local' moving towards 'global', today the predominant orientation is rather 'global' towards 'local'.
