ABSTRACT
Sustainable development is best achieved through open, competitive, rightly framed international markets that honor legitimate comparative advantages. Such markets encourage efficiency and innovation, both necessities for sustainable human progress. The demonstrations against free trade and market globalization have thrown down a challenge for those of us who believe firmly that markets offer the most promising means to achieve global sustainability. Globalization accelerates the pace of change and produces winners and losers. Thus when shocks come, such as the 1997 Asian crisis, people feel that neither they nor their governments have control over what the market is doing to their lives. The financial markets’ hunger for transparency is also fueling a democratization of information. Although trade liberalization undoubtedly creates wealth, skeptics of the growing market claim that it tends to widen rather than close income gaps, concentrating wealth in the hands of the rich at the expense of the poor, both within and between nations.
