ABSTRACT
Many scholars and practitioners analyze the global economy from the perspective of the multi-centric organizational world view. The basic rules of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now the World Trade Organization, follow this static principle. Institutionalists are deeply skeptical of the claims of free trade advocates such as the World Bank that everyone wins from increased free trade. According to empirical studies using the World Bank’s own trade models, 36 less developed countries that adopted the most open trade policies in the 1990s experienced increases in the incidence of poverty. The rules of the presumably free trade-oriented World Trade Organization give special protection to intellectual property. The US government agreed to provide fair compensation to the families of the victims of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. The world view of market capitalism does not grasp what for institutionalists is an obvious reality.
