ABSTRACT
Economists tend to look favorably on the rapid growth of international trade, international investment, international finance, and international migration and, therefore, to advocate for open borders. If challenged, most would probably reply that they base their advocacy on solid, proven analysis carried out by economists for three centuries. Their view is, no doubt, also influenced by the fact that growing international economic integration has coincided with the rapid growth of material wealth over the past two hundred years. For example, while world trade expanded from less than 1 percent of output to about one quarter of all goods produced, the world’s average per capita gross domestic product (GDP) increased by a factor of ten.1 Of course, GDP does not accurately reflect human well-being, but many alternative measures of human welfare also point to a clear improvement. For example, life expectancy in the world has tripled since 1800, infant mortality has become rarer in most countries, education levels have risen almost everywhere, nutrition has become more constant, more people have access to safe water than ever before, and labor-saving technologies have been developed to reduce physical toil in almost all types of human work. Should we not, therefore, be celebrating our good fortune to be living in today’s economically integrated global economy?
