Introduction

Economies of the past were mainly confined to their autarkic activities feeding just the peoples of their own territories without having any connection with the rest of the world. The results of which, as the existing literatures show, were low volumes of productions and consumptions of goods and services, and lower levels of satisfactions of the households and firms. In addition, the resources were distributed in skewed manner with the so-called developed economies of the world possessing a giant portion of the global wealth. After the territorial boundaries of the economies are removed through cross border flows of goods and services under the nomenclature of “Globalization,” there have been tremendous increases in the income levels of all the economies which resulted into decreasing trends of global inequality. Most of the countries in the world today have entered the phase of globalization under the objective of increasing growth of output and employment. The trade barriers have been abolished across the borders, flows of goods and services have been increasing besides improvements in diplomatic relations. Empirical evidence shows that the global output in general and countries' outputs in particular have increased, and employment levels have been diverted from the traditional to the service-related activities. The economies have been trending to a global village as the income gap between the developed and less developed countries have been going down. There has been convergence among the countries in true sense with respect to income. But there are additional costs of the effects of globalization as well. However, there have been increasing inequalities within and across the economies putting a threat to the impact of globalization. On the other hand, there has been tremendous pressure upon the uses, rather extractions, of natural resources. The combined effects of these two negative effects give rise to the problem of sustainable development, although some countries are trying to reduce income inequality and invest upon conservation capital. But the overall impact of globalization on income growth and its distribution, and sustainable development is subject to further investigation with the help of new theories and latest data. The present book has aimed to address the issue of the impacts of globalization on income distribution and sustainable development of individual as well as groups of economies in the world through new theories and empirical observations. Are we eyeing for a better future? This is a big question behind the building of this idea.