ABSTRACT
Globalization has many facets. From the economic perspective, globalization can be defined as the internationalization of market structures, technological development and communication structures. The causes of the globalization process are the international liberalization of markets, the increase in mobility of financial capital and to a lesser extent of human capital, the enormous reduction in communication costs due to technological developments like ICT (Chapter 16) and the reduction in transport costs. Also increasing returns to scale stimulate the internationalization of business. Strong competitive markets force companies to seek alliances or mergers with other companies in order to benefit from returns to scale from new production processes, product innovations or marketing.
