In her book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade economist Pietra Rivoli examines the effects of globalisation and then warns of the dangers inherent to central planning;
From the Inside Flap
In The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, business professor Pietra Rivoli takes the reader on a fascinating around-the-world adventure to reveal the life story of her six-dollar T-shirt. Traveling from a West Texas cotton field to a Chinese factory, and from trade negotiations in Washington to a used clothing market in Africa, Rivoli examines international trade through the life story of this simple product. Combining a compelling story with substantive scholarship, Rivoli shows that both globalization's critics and its cheerleaders have oversimplified the world of international trade.
As Rivoli spoke with businesspeople around the world who played a part in her T-shirt's life, she was forced to confront her own assumptions about the political, economic, and ethical effects of globalization. Trained as a classical economist, Rivoli expected the story of her T-shirt to reveal the undeniable benefits of global free trade and the misguided ideas of the anti-globalization movement. Instead, she found that "free markets" usually aren't free; that even the staunchest allies of free trade regularly benefit from its restriction; and that the alleged "victims" of globalization are often its greatest beneficiaries. While the globalization debate remains centered on the perils versus the promise of competitive economic markets, Rivoli finds that the life story of her T-shirt turns as much on power and politics as it does on markets.
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy uses a simple T-shirt to reveal the politics and the human side of the globalization debate. Within the fabric of every product are fascinating businesses, good and bad politics, revealing histories, and especially the hopes and dreams of real people. These people's stories—and the story of the T-shirt that ties them together—present the most nuanced look yet at the economics and politics of globalization.
From the book;
Americans, and now Russians and Slovaks and Chinese, disdain such central planning for its inefficiencies. A system that ignores market signals, that provides no incentives, that subsidizes losers cannot be efficient in producing goods and services. Central planners will produce the wrong goods, use the wrong inputs, set the wrong prices, hire the wrong people, and ultimately produce shoddy products, and not enough of them, anyway. But to meet [Chinese textile-mill manager] Tao [Yong Fang] in the Number 36 factory is to realize that the real tragedy of central planning lies not in its inefficiency but in its crushing of the intellect, of 20 years of Tao's energy and intelligence laid to waste. For 35 years the spindles in the Number 36 mill clattered, and no one working in the mill had to decide anything. So today there is determination but bewilderment as Tao faces the basic questions of running a business rather than turning a cog: what to produce, where to sell, whom to hire, what to pay?
