Hi all

I'm Youseok Choi, a doctoral student of social welfare in University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am interested in the effect of globalization on the restructuring of welfare state and preparing a paper dealing with this issue.

I attempt to make a "globalization indicator" using network analysis. The current measurements of globalization have several problems. Although there has been a consensus on the definition of globalization emphasizing the facet of deepening "interdependency" between nations, most measurements of globalization use the "attributes" of individual nations, such as the amounts of trade and the volumes of flows of foreign direct investment.

Several studies explaining globalization effects attempt to explain the variation of government expenditures and revenues using these variables. I think, these studies are flawed in that they do not take account of the effect of changing global networks in which each nation is embedded. The external effect of globalization is reduced into several properties of each nation(openness of economy) and these measurements ignore the dynamic process of globalization.

Thus, I'm trying to generate "global trade constraint" variable that captures the degree of constraint that comes from global trade network and the location of the nation in the network. I also make "global investment constraint" variable in a similar way. I almost gathered trade data and foreign direct investment data among OECD countries.

I am wondering how much my argument is convincing. Are these new network variables much different from previous attribute variables? I attached my research proposal. Would you give me some useful comments? Thanks.