Deep Dive: Factors Driving Globalisation

Compiled 2026-09-28. Grounded in research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md (Table of Contents; "Paper mechanics"; the §4.3.1 item-3 entry; the "factors-driving-globalisation.ts — mark-scheme-bullet coverage audit (2026-09-13)" log entry and its two follow-up reconciliation entries; and the Flagged Issues / "Topics with enough verified material" sections) — every citation below was re-checked against that file's own sourcing, not re-derived from memory. Cross-read before writing, to keep this document additive rather than a restatement: the live lesson content/veridian/curriculum/wbs14/ factors-driving-globalisation.ts (its four-group model, Apple/Vietnam landed-cost worked chain, both level-exemplars, and trap-taxonomy are NOT reproduced here), codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md and forge-exam-technique-guide.md in this same folder, signal-frequency-and-boundaries.md's frequency row for 4.3.1.3, and content/veridian/question-bank/wbs14.ts (checked directly — this spec point has no entry there to duplicate). No new primary source was fetched for this document; it synthesises citations the facts bank already carries into a shape none of the existing five documents provide.

#WBS14 CODEX Deep-Dive — Factors Driving Globalisation (spec 4.3.1.3)

#What this document is, and isn't

The lesson file already derives why Pearson's nine spec-listed items (a–i) collapse into four causal groups, and proves it with one extended worked example (Apple's landed-cost decision to move AirPods assembly to Vietnam). The CODEX definitions bank already carries a one-paragraph glossary entry for each item. Neither document lays out, item by item, every real exam citation this spec point has actually produced, with the citation's own indicative content in full, organised so a reader can see at a glance which of the nine lettered parts have a genuine standalone anchor and which are still resting on overlap with another part's citation. That is what this document adds. It does not re-teach the four-group model or reproduce the landed-cost chain — both are cross-referenced, not restated.

Scope discipline carried over from the facts bank itself: 5 of the roughly 15 series held since first assessment (June 2020) were read in full for the original pass (October 2021, June 2022, January 2023, October 2023, January 2024); one further series was added later as a single targeted question-only pull, not a full series review (January 2026, Q1(d) only). Every "confirmed" claim below traces to one of those six pulls specifically — not to the full ~15-series population. Where the facts bank itself flags a citation as lower-confidence (a third-party mirror rather than a direct qualifications.pearson.com fetch, or a targeted single-question pull rather than a full series read), that flag is repeated here rather than silently dropped.

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#Part 1 — The nine items: theory, real sub-cases, and what each has actually been tested on

#(a) Trade liberalisation and the role of the WTO

The mechanism. Trade liberalisation is a government (or group of governments) choosing to remove a barrier it itself created — a tariff cut, a quota lifted, a restriction relaxed. It doesn't create trade opportunity from nothing; it removes an artificial ceiling on trade that was already commercially viable. The WTO does the identical thing at multilateral scale, through two distinct tools: running liberalisation rounds (many countries negotiating barrier cuts together) and resolving disputes between members once an agreement already in force is allegedly broken.

Real sub-case 1 — bilateral liberalisation. The EU–Vietnam trade agreement is Pearson's own named, confirmed example, used as the applied anchor for a full 12-mark Assess in its own right (October 2021 Q1e) — a single agreement between two specific parties, not a multilateral round.

Real sub-case 2 — multilateral rounds. The WTO's Doha round is named in two separate, independently re-verified mark schemes (January 2023 Q1e and January 2026 Q1d) as the standing example of a liberalisation round. Both citations agree the round "collapsed after 14 years" without full agreement — the same fact, confirmed twice, not two different claims.

Real sub-case 3 — dispute resolution. Two different, non-overlapping real disputes are credited across the two WTO citations: a "harmful fishing subsidies" agreement (January 2023 Q1e, no year given in the mark scheme itself) and Australia's dispute with Canada over wine restrictions (January 2026 Q1d). Two separate real examples of the same mechanism, not one example cited twice.

The genuinely two-sided sub-case. January 2026 Q1(d) is the one WTO citation set as its own standalone 12-mark Assess ("Assess the role of the WTO in trade liberalisation"), rather than embedded inside a broader transport/communication question — and its indicative content is explicitly built to be argued both ways. Positive side (paraphrased): it supervises world trading arrangements and promotes free trade; 164 countries currently belong, joining specifically for the extra liberalisation access membership brings; it actively "assists and encourages" developing economies to join and participate in trade talks. Limiting side, genuinely absent from the January 2023 citation and found only here: the WTO "cannot force countries to reduce trade barriers"; disputes "often" take a long time to resolve even once accepted; and — the specific bullet that matters most for this lesson's four-group model — trading blocs have "done much to liberalise trade" without the WTO's involvement at all, meaning institutional liberalisation can and does happen through a channel other than the WTO specifically. The mark scheme's own closing line states the balance directly: the WTO is "just one of several factors responsible for trade liberalisation," but "nevertheless... an important contributor."

Micro-example (real, compact). A candidate defending the WTO's role only needs three linked facts, not nine: it organised the Doha round (a real liberalisation attempt); the round collapsed after 14 years (the real limit); and 164 countries still choose to join anyway (the real counter-evidence that membership remains worth having despite that failure). That is a complete, two-sided, three-sentence Assess paragraph built entirely from confirmed indicative content — no invented data required.

#(b) Political change

The mechanism. A government decision to open a previously closed or heavily restricted economy to foreign trade and investment — distinct from trade liberalisation (a) in that it is usually a single country's own internal policy shift (a change of regime, ideology or economic strategy) rather than a negotiated agreement between two or more parties.

Real citation. Confirmed directly inside the same January 2023 Q1(e) indicative content already credited above for the WTO and transport/communication — a bullet-coverage audit (2026-09-13) re-extracted this specific bullet and found an earlier pass of the lesson had wrongly left it in the "unconfirmed" list. The mark scheme's own words: "political change such as the opening up of previously closed economies has increased integration." No country is named in the mark scheme for this specific bullet.

Illustrative note, not mark-scheme content: China's post-1978 reform and the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse are commonly used real-world illustrations of exactly this mechanism (a previously closed, centrally-planned economy opening to trade), and Vietnam's own 1986 Đổi Mới reforms are the specific, real political change underlying every Vietnam-based FDI/trade example elsewhere in this spec item — but none of these three is the mark scheme's own named case for bullet (b) specifically; treat them as general-knowledge illustration, not confirmed exam content, if using them in an answer.

#(c) Reduced cost of transport and communication

The mechanism, and the sub-case most answers collapse into one. A 2026-09-13 bullet-coverage audit of this exact sub-point, re-extracting the January 2023 Q1(e) mark scheme bullet by bullet, found THREE distinct real channels, not one and not two: (1) containerisation cutting the cost of sea freight to "just over 20% of its former cost by the end of the 20th century"; (2) cheaper air travel, credited specifically for enabling more face-to-face business negotiation, not for moving freight; (3) a genuinely separate communications-technology channel — satellites and other technology cutting the cost of communicating "to a fraction" of what it previously was — independently confirmed a second time in the January 2026 Q1(d) mark scheme, which separately credits "better communications and infrastructure" with having "encouraged trade without the help of the WTO." An earlier build of this lesson had merged channel (3) into channel (2); the audit corrected it, because the two work through different mechanisms — one moves people, the other replaces the need to move anyone at all.

Micro-example, one channel isolated (the real fact alone, no invented figures). Sea freight specifically: the mark scheme's own confirmed fact is that containerisation cut the cost of moving goods by sea to "just over 20%" of its former cost by the end of the 20th century — a real percentage, not a constructed one. (The lesson's own worked chain attaches illustrative dollar amounts to this same real percentage to build a full landed-cost model; those dollar figures are explicitly flagged there as a constructed model, not a real cost, and are not reused here to avoid implying they are independently verified.) The mechanism in one sentence: a fall of that size moves goods that were previously uneconomic to ship across a threshold into being tradable, without any change in tariff policy at all.

#(d) Increased significance of global (multinational) corporations

The mechanism. Not a fresh cause sitting alongside the other eight — the aggregate effect of many individual businesses' FDI decisions (e) compounding through agglomeration: each MNC that establishes itself in a location lowers the cost of the next one arriving, because a skilled labour pool, a supplier network and adapted customs/infrastructure already exist. A flow (FDI, one decision) versus a stock (MNC significance, the accumulated result of many).

Evidence status — genuinely thin, honestly flagged. Neither the original 5-series pull nor the January 2026 targeted addition surfaced a mark-scheme question anchored to this sub-point by itself. The facts bank's own "Lesson-audit log" entry records this explicitly under 4.3.1.3(d): real, mandatory spec content, taught to the identical standard as the confirmed parts, but without its own standalone citation in the six pulls checked so far. This document does not manufacture one. (A related but distinct MNC-impact question exists under spec 4.3.4.1 — see the SIGNAL doc's own row for that sub-section — but that tests the impact of MNCs already present, not what makes their significance increase, so it isn't treated as a substitute citation here.)

#(e) Increased investment flows (FDI)

The mechanism. A business (or individual) investing directly in productive capacity abroad — a factory, a controlling stake — rather than merely exporting into a market from a home base.

Real citation. An 8-mark Discuss (October 2021 Q1c) — the one confirmed citation for this whole spec item that uses Discuss rather than Assess, so it sits on a three-band (L1 1–2 / L2 3–5 / L3 6–8) descriptor rather than the four-band Assess structure the rest of this item's confirmed citations use. Real content: South Korea's multi-billion-dollar investment into Vietnam, and Apple's own decision to move AirPods production there, are credited with raising Vietnam's productive capacity, lowering unemployment, and — via the exports that capacity then generates — improving the balance of payments. The same mark scheme credits a genuine counter-risk, not just a list of benefits: FDI arriving faster than an economy can absorb it can itself trigger inflation.

Micro-example (real, compact). Two linked facts, not a full worked chain: FDI raised Vietnam's productive capacity and lowered unemployment (the credited benefit); but the same mark scheme credits the risk that FDI growing too fast can trigger inflation (the credited limit). A two-sentence Discuss paragraph, fully sourced, with no invented figure needed — distinct from the lesson's own extended numeric landed-cost model, which answers a different question (why does a business choose FDI over exporting, not what does FDI do to the receiving economy).

#(f) Migration within and between economies

The mechanism, and the sub-case a labour-supply-only answer misses. Confirmed in the same January 2023 Q1(e) indicative content as (b) above, and — like (b) — wrongly left in the lesson's own "unconfirmed" list until the 2026-09-13 audit re-extracted the primary PDF directly. The mark scheme credits TWO distinct channels, not one: labour mobility as a supply-side input (more workers available to a globalising business), and — the bullet most answers never reach — "migration of people spread ideas and culture leading to further globalisation." The second is a cultural-diffusion mechanism, not a labour-supply one: migrants carry tastes, expectations and know-how across a border, making the economies on both sides more alike over time. Spec wording itself is explicit that this item covers migration within economies as well as between them — an internal move (rural to industrial zone) is just as valid a citation of this bullet as an international one.

Micro-example, the under-used channel specifically. A single sentence captures the mark scheme's own second channel without reproducing the lesson's Vietnam case: a diaspora community that has settled in a new country brings, along with its labour, a taste for goods from its country of origin — demand for those goods, and familiarity with how to source and market them, crosses the border with the people, independently of anything happening to trade policy or shipping cost.

#(g) Growth of the global labour force

The mechanism. A rise in the total number of people available to work worldwide, driven by population growth and rising labour-force participation — most significant in Asia, Africa and other emerging regions per the spec's own Table of Contents wording (4.3.1.1b). Distinct from migration (f), which redistributes an existing labour force across borders rather than growing the global total.

Evidence status — genuinely thin, honestly flagged. Like (d), no standalone mark-scheme question anchored to this exact sub-point was surfaced in any of the six pulls checked. The adjacent 4.3.1.1 content (growing economies) touches the same Asia/Africa labour-force growth in its own confirmed citations (Vietnam's sectoral shift, June 2022 Q1c) — real and relevant background, but anchored to a different spec item (economic growth's characteristics), not to this one's "growth of the global labour force as a cause of globalisation" framing specifically. Kept separate rather than counted as a citation for (g), on the same discipline the lesson itself uses to keep 4.3.1.1 and 4.3.1.3(h) distinct despite sharing a mechanism (see (h) below).

#(h) Structural change

The mechanism. A shift in an economy's sectoral composition — commonly primary/agriculture toward secondary/manufacturing toward tertiary/services — driven, in this spec item's framing, by the aggregate effect of many businesses' FDI and trade decisions steering investment and employment toward whichever sector the falling institutional, cost and factor-movement barriers have made newly competitive.

Evidence status, and a genuine overlap worth naming precisely. No standalone 4.3.1.3(h) citation was surfaced in any pull checked. The same underlying mechanism (sectoral shift) is real, confirmed exam content elsewhere on this paper — Vietnam's shift from primary toward secondary/tertiary sectors is the credited real content for a confirmed Discuss-8 exemplar (June 2022 Q1c) — but that citation sits under spec 4.3.1.1c ("implications of economic growth... employment patterns"), a different lettered item on a different numbered spec point, not under 4.3.1.3(h)'s own "structural change as a cause of globalisation" framing. Citing the June 2022 material as if it were confirmed 4.3.1.3(h) content would overclaim what the primary source actually supports; the mechanism transfers, the citation does not.

#(i) Impact on businesses

The mechanism. Not a tenth, independent factor — the spec's own instruction (4.1) that every one of the other eight only earns marks once brought back to what a named business actually does differently as a result: which markets it can enter, which locations it can produce in, which competitors it now faces, which workforce it can draw on.

Real citation, with a precise scope caveat. A genuine, confirmed examiner-report trap (June 2022 Q1d) records candidates asked to assess trade opportunities specifically for European businesses instead writing about opportunities for developing economies generally — the exact failure this spec item's framing exists to prevent. The scope caveat, already carried honestly in the lesson's own header and repeated here rather than dropped: that citation is set under this paper's adjacent 4.3.1.1(c) sub-point (implications of economic growth), not under 4.3.1.3's own part (i) specifically. It is used here because it tests the identical spec-4.1 business-specificity principle part (i) rests on, not because it is confirmed exam content for 4.3.1.3(i) by citation.

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#Part 2 — Complete real exam-citation inventory for spec 4.3.1.3

Every row is a real, independently-verified mark-scheme or examiner-report citation the facts bank carries for this spec point specifically. Nothing below is invented or estimated.

Not in this table, and why: the SIGNAL doc's frequency row for 4.3.1.3 counts "Oct21 (×2 qns), Jan23" as the 3-of-5-series figure, plus the January 2026 targeted addition — identical to the four rows above once the June 2022 examiner-report trap (never counted as a 4.3.1.3 "series hit" in SIGNAL, since it isn't indicative content for this spec point) is set aside. This document's inventory and SIGNAL's frequency count agree with each other by construction, not coincidentally — both trace to the same underlying facts-bank entries.

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#Part 3 — Confirmed vs. not-yet-confirmed, honestly

Five of nine lettered parts (a, b, c, e, f) have a genuine standalone citation; three (d, g, h) do not, in the six pulls this facts bank has run; the ninth (i) is illustrated by a real citation set under a different, adjacent spec point rather than confirmed by one anchored to 4.3.1.3 itself. The three with no citation at all are, not coincidentally, the parts this lesson's own four-group model calls "structural-consequence" or labour-force-supply-side content — the parts of this spec item closest to being an aggregate description of the economy rather than a single business's own decision, which may be part of why Pearson's stimulus-extract-based Section A questions (built around one specific business's situation) have not yet anchored a question to them directly. That is an observation about the pattern in the evidence, not a claimed reason confirmed anywhere in a mark scheme.

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#Part 4 — Cross-citation synthesis: what the evidence as a whole actually shows

Four things are visible only once all five real citations above are read together, rather than one at a time inside their own lessons:

1. The 12-mark Assess tariff dominates this spec item. Of the five citations, four are a 12-mark Assess; only the FDI citation (e) is an 8-mark Discuss. No confirmed 4-mark, 6-mark or 20-mark citation exists for 4.3.1.3 in this evidence base — a genuinely different pattern from spec items like 4.3.2.1 (a full 20-mark Evaluate) or 4.3.1.1 (a 4-mark quantitative opener). A student allocating revision time by mark-tariff-frequency should weight this spec item toward 12-mark Assess technique specifically, not spread evenly across every command word this paper uses.
2. The Doha round is the single most-repeated named fact across the whole spec item. It appears, independently, in both the embedded January 2023 citation and the standalone January 2026 citation — the only specific fact confirmed twice, in two different series, for this spec point. If only one fact from this entire document had to be retained, the evidence weights it as this one.
3. Every citation with a named country uses Vietnam or Senegal — no confirmed citation for this spec item uses a European, North American or Latin American case. Oct21's two questions and Jan23's Q1e both draw on developing/emerging-economy case material (Vietnam; Senegal/AfCFTA). This is worth naming precisely as a pattern in the sample checked, not a rule about what Pearson would set — the facts bank's own "never read this as a probability" discipline (SIGNAL doc) applies here exactly as it does to frequency counts.
4. The WTO is the only sub-item confirmed as deliberately two-sided by the mark scheme's own design. Trade liberalisation (bilateral), transport/communication cost, political change, FDI and migration are each confirmed with a real positive mechanism and, in FDI's case, one real counter-risk (inflation) — but only the WTO citation is built, across two separate mark schemes, around an explicit, extended positive/negative structure spanning multiple bullets each way. An Assess answer on the WTO specifically therefore has more real balancing material available to it than an Assess answer built from any other single item on this spec point — worth knowing when a question gives a choice of which factor to develop in depth.

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#Sources checked for this document

research/veridian/WBS14-verified-facts.md — Table of Contents (spec 4.3.1.3 wording); "Paper mechanics" (command-word/mark table); the main §4.3.1 item-3 narrative entry; the "factors-driving-globalisation.ts — mark-scheme-bullet coverage audit (2026-09-13)" log entry in full, including its 16-bullet January 2023 Q1(e) re-extraction and its January 2026 Q1(d) corroboration; the 2026-09-14 reconciliation entry for the same lesson; and the "Topics with enough verified material for a genuine standalone lesson" / "Flagged issues" sections (items on sample size and the October 2024/June 2026/January 2026 third-party-mirror sourcing caveats). content/veridian/curriculum/wbs14/factors-driving-globalisation.ts — read in full to confirm what is already taught, so nothing here duplicates its four-group derivation, landed-cost worked chain, level-exemplars or trap-taxonomy. content/veridian/technique-hub/wbs14/codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md, forge-exam-technique-guide.md and signal-frequency-and-boundaries.md — read in full for the same non-duplication check. content/veridian/question-bank/wbs14.ts — checked directly; contains no entry for this spec point.