ABSTRACT
There have been dramatic changes in the balance of economic power. When that power lay mainly in North America and Europe, and the only challengers were the Soviet Union and, later, Japan, the simple concept of a world consisting of a rich ‘north’ and a poor ‘south’ seemed valid. It is less valid now that some southern economies are growing much faster than northern ones, while the Soviet collapse glaringly revealed the relative poverty of eastern Europe and Russia.
