Essay on growth and globalization

Globalization process is an aggregate concept that defines the increase in relationships among countries. Economic, financial, legal, social and cultural systems are involved in this process of change. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon derives the difficulty of measuring it. The first chapter provides an updated review of literature focused on globalization measures. The second chapter provides a comparative analysis of the different globalization indices to verify whether overall globalization is able to influence growth or whether there is some specific aspect of globalization that has an impact on it. Furthermore, I introduce the idea that the initial economic development may have a key role to explain the relationship between globalization and growth studying two sub-samples of developed and developing countries. Finally, the third chapter is an empirical analysis of the relationship between macroeconomic cycle volatility and financial integration in European countries. I aim to verify if being part of the Euro zone may affect the macroeconomic cycle volatility.