ABSTRACT
This chapter is organized around frequently discussed issues of the global economy with a genealogical account of the key conceptions and their major trajectories in relation to controversial issues in addition to a critical analysis of the prospects for the global economy. The world economy was formed in the 1860s/1870s when the global economy was only beginning to germinate, and a century later emerged, in the 1980s/1990s, alongside economic globalization. The global economy is a pluralistic mechanism of national economies, inter-state economies, transnational economies, and supranational ones. It embodies multidimensional economic perspectives that range from the micro-/meso-perspective to the macro-perspective. The global economy grows with the trend of economic globalization. Arguably, the contemporary global economic model would not have emerged without the new wave of globalization beginning in the 1990s. As economic globalization portends the end of the welfare state and social democracy, they claim that the global economy will replace the national economy.
