Integration of the World’s Smallest Economies into the Global Economy : Measurement across Institutional, Trade, Migration, Capital and Financial Dimensions

This book offers the first multidimensional assessment of countries’ integration into the global economy.

This book offers the first multidimensional assessment of countries’ integration into the global economy. Drawing on twelve measures, it examines key dimensions of integration, including institutional participation, analysed through membership to international organizations; mobility, assessed through freedom of movement and passport strength; trade, evaluated through the scale and structure of trade in goods and services; migration–transfer, measured through remittance flows; and capital and financial flows. The analysis is complemented by established development benchmarks, such as GDP per capita, the Human Development Index (HDI), and the KOF Globalization Index. The book focuses on the world’s smallest economies, which, although collectively generating only one percent of global GDP, comprise as many as 93 countries—nearly half of the world’s states. By conceptualizing these economies as a distinct analytical category and advancing applied, multidimensional measures of their integration into the global economy, a new and more nuanced perspective on international economics is presented.