Deep Dive: Globalisation

Compiled 2026-09-29. Grounded in research/veridian/WEC14-verified-facts.md — specifically its "4.3.1 Causes and effects of globalisation" section, its "Series coverage log," its "wec14/globalisation.ts — Oct 2022 Q9 (effects) + Jan 2022 Q8 (causes)" mark-scheme-bullet-audit entry, and the 4.3.2.4 WTO-role entry that independently names the June 2025 series' source-booklet country — every citation below traces to one of these, not to memory or to a different paper's material. Cross-read first, to keep this additive rather than a restatement: the live lesson content/veridian/curriculum/wec14/globalisation.ts (read in full — its trade-threshold mechanism, five-stage worked chain, diagram, six-item trap-taxonomy, conditional-judgement drill, beyond-spec theory block and full five-level Vietnam essay exemplar are NOT reproduced here); the three existing WEC14 technique-hub documents in this folder — codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md, forge-exam-technique-guide.md, signal-frequency-and-boundaries.md — all read in full for the same non-duplication check; and content/veridian/question-bank/wec14.ts (checked directly — no entry for this spec point exists there to duplicate). No new primary source was fetched for this document; it re-organises citations the facts bank and lesson already carry into a shape none of the existing five WEC14 documents provide, plus two short, explicitly-hedged pieces of real source-booklet context (Zambia, Turkey) and one worked calculation that are not currently used anywhere in this course's WEC14 material.

#WEC14 CODEX Deep-Dive — Globalisation (spec 4.3.1)

#What this document is, and isn't

globalisation.ts already derives, in real depth, why falling transport and communication costs is a genuine cause of globalisation rather than something that merely correlates with it — the trade- threshold mechanism, a five-stage worked chain with real numbers, and a diagram — and it already lists and sources all five named causes, FDI's four motives and two-sided recipient-country impact, and the complete benefits/costs lists from this spec item's two real Section C anchor essays. It carries a six-item trap-taxonomy and a full five-level Vietnam essay exemplar. None of that is repeated here.

What none of the five existing WEC14 documents currently provides is a single place that (1) lists every real, question-level exam appearance this specific spec point has actually produced across the archive, graded honestly by how firmly each is anchored to a named question rather than to a source booklet in general; (2) states plainly which of 4.3.1's own lettered sub-parts do, and don't, have a standalone citation behind them; and (3) draws out what those citations show once read together, rather than one at a time inside the lesson's own paragraphs. That is this document's job. It also adds two short, real pieces of source-booklet context the facts bank names for this spec point but that no existing WEC14 document currently uses (Zambia's copper dependence, Turkey's EU-accession prospects), and one worked calculation that the lesson's own header comment mentions as independently verified but never actually shows worked through in its taught body.

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#Part 1 — The theory model, in brief

Spec 4.3.1 asks three separate questions, each with its own lettered sub-parts (transcribed directly from the spec's own table of contents): 1. Characteristics — (a) trade as a % of GDP, (b) TNCs and FDI, (c) migration; 2. Causes — (a) five named factors, (b) FDI by TNCs specifically (reasons; impact on recipient countries); 3. Effects — (a) possible benefits, (b) possible costs. The lesson's own flagship result — that a good is only traded once the price gap between two countries exceeds the cost of moving it, so a falling transport/communication cost (or, mathematically identically, a tariff cut) mechanically pulls a specific band of goods across that threshold — is derived there with real numbers and a diagram, and is assumed rather than re-derived below.

#1(a)–(c). Characteristics — a real evidentiary asymmetry worth naming precisely

Of the three named characteristics, only (a) — trade as a % of GDP — has a real, mark-scheme-quoted number behind it: world exports as a % of GDP rose from 20% in 1980 to 26.3% in 2020, a genuine 6.3-percentage-point rise, confirmed in the June 2025 mark scheme (Q7(b)) and independently re-verified twice against the primary PDF. (b) TNCs/FDI and (c) migration are both spec-named characteristics in their own right, and both are illustrated in this course's material with real content — the Vietnam/Japan $3.4bn FDI figure for (b), the EU-enlargement labour-migration example for (c) — but neither illustration is itself a characteristic-level statistic the way (a)'s trade/GDP figure is (a stock of FDI, or a migration flow, expressed as a share of GDP or population). The facts bank's own flagged gap agrees: a targeted search for a standalone migration-specific Section A MCQ across the archive came back empty. Treat (a) as the one characteristic with a real quantified anchor, and (b)/(c) as qualitatively confirmed but not quantitatively anchored in anything the facts bank has read — a genuine, stated gap, not an invented one.

#2(a). Causes — the one sub-case each factor actually needs

The spec names five causal factors without itself supplying real-world illustrations for any of them. Of the five, only one has a real, mark-scheme-supplied example attached to it in the citations this course has read: political change, where the January 2022 mark scheme's own credited example is the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's post-1978 opening-up. An answer that names political change but illustrates it with a different real transition — India's 1991 liberalisation, say, or Myanmar's partial opening — is analytically sound, but is extending beyond what a citation in this evidence base actually confirms Pearson has credited; worth knowing before presenting a substitute example as equally "anchored" as the Soviet/China one.

#2(b). FDI by TNCs — the recipient-country-impact half has no citation of its own

The reasons half of 2(b) — market-, efficiency-, resource-seeking, and tariff-jumping FDI — is illustrated with a real figure (Vietnam, Japan's $3.4bn) and, in the lesson's MCQ set, a constructed tariff-jumping scenario. The recipient-country-impact half of the same lettered sub-point — jobs, tax revenue, technology transfer, set against profit repatriation and crowding-out — is a standard, accurate account of FDI's effects, but the facts bank does not attach a single named question testing "impact of FDI on a recipient country" as its own separate mark-scheme item. The nearest real citations are the general effects bullets from the October 2022 Q9 essay (framed as globalisation's effects broadly, not FDI's specifically) and the qualitative Vietnam/Japan context. Worth knowing if asked to defend a claim as directly sourced rather than reasoned from adjacent material.

#3(a)–(b). Effects — confirmed in unusual depth, with one real structural quirk

The October 2022 Q9 mark scheme is this spec item's richest single citation in the whole archive: ten separately-creditable benefit bullets and eleven separately-creditable cost bullets, all now taught in the lesson. Its own structural quirk changes how an answer should be planned, not just what it should contain: the mark scheme explicitly allows benefits to be written as the KAA band and costs as the Evaluation band, or the reverse — marks track whichever side is actually developed with reasoning and evidence, not a fixed "benefits = KAA, costs = Evaluation" assignment.

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#Part 2 — Real exam-citation inventory for spec 4.3.1

Every row is a real citation the facts bank carries for this spec point. Confidence is graded honestly — several rows below are genuine source-booklet context rather than a question-level citation for 4.3.1 itself, and are marked as such rather than folded silently into the higher-confidence rows.

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#Part 3 — Confirmed vs not-yet-confirmed, by lettered sub-part

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#Part 4 — Cross-citation synthesis: what the evidence, read together, actually shows

1. The confirmed exam-angle range is narrower than the facts bank's own general prose claims. Its 4.3.1 narrative states this topic "appears most often as a Section C 20-mark 'evaluate' essay ... or folded into Section B Q7(e) 14-mark 'discuss' questions when the source booklet covers a globalising economy" — but the citation-level inventory in Part 2 contains no confirmed 14-mark Q7(e), 4-mark "explain," or 6-mark "analyse two" instance for 4.3.1 anywhere in the archive read. The two confirmed Section B marks are the June 2025 Q7(a) 2-mark calculation and Q7(b) 8-mark "examine two." That 14-mark claim is a stated general pattern, not a citation this document can independently confirm — worth treating as a prediction, not a verified fact, until a matching question is actually found.
2. Every real named country for this spec point sits outside Western Europe and North America. Vietnam and China are confirmed question-level citations; Zambia and Turkey are thematic source-booklet context (Part 2, Low/thematic rows). No confirmed 4.3.1 citation in this evidence base uses a developed Western economy as its worked example — a pattern in the sample actually checked, not a claim about what Pearson would set next.
3. The evidentiary weight inside 4.3.1 is lopsided toward causes and effects, not characteristics. Causes and effects each carry one full 20-mark essay with a dozen or more real, individually creditable bullets; characteristics carries exactly one quantified fact (the 20%→26.3% figure) and otherwise rests on standard definition. A revision plan that weights time evenly across the three items would be over-investing in characteristics relative to what the archive has actually tested it on, and under-investing in the causes/effects Evaluation bands specifically.
4. Four of the five named causes have a confirmed real reversal citation; the fifth does not. Transport/communication costs (reshoring, "peak globalisation," June 2025), trade liberalisation (Doha stalling), trading blocs (Brexit/Grexit/Italeave) and political change (US–China trade war) each have one in the January 2022 or June 2025 Evaluation bands. TNC significance is the one named cause for which this document found no standalone reversal or illustrative real-world example in either mark scheme — an open evidentiary gap for that specific factor, not a confirmed fifth reversal case, whatever a quick read of the lesson's own trap-taxonomy summary might suggest at a glance.
5. The characteristics stat and its linked Q7(a) calculation are the only confirmed quantitative- skill mark this spec item has produced. Every other confirmed 4.3.1 citation — Jan 2022 Q8, Oct 2022 Q9, and June 2025 Q7(b) — is a qualitative KAA/Evaluation essay-style mark. The one real calculation this spec item has produced (Part 5, below) is worth knowing specifically because it is the only place a QS6/QS7-style "back out the whole from a part and a percentage" skill has been confirmed attached to globalisation rather than to a different spec point.

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#Part 5 — Two real pieces of context, and one calculation, not yet used elsewhere in this course

#The Q7(a) calculation the lesson's own header names but never shows worked

Every WEC14 Section B question opens with a 2-mark Q7(a) pure calculation (confirmed paper structure). For June 2025, drawing on the same Figure 1 that supplies the 20%→26.3% characteristics statistic, the facts bank confirms the credited arithmetic is: world exports of $22.5tn, stated as 26.3% of world GDP that year, imply a world GDP of

$$22.5\text{tn} \div 0.263 \approx $85.55\text{tn}$$

independently re-checked here (22.5 ÷ 0.263 = 85.551…, rounding to the facts bank's own $85.55tn). The lesson's own header comment names this exact figure as "sympy-checked" during research, but the taught body never shows the working. The general move it tests — given a part, and that part expressed as a percentage of a whole, find the whole — is the same QS6/QS7-style skill this paper's Section B Q7(a) consistently opens with; this is simply the one real instance of it this spec item has produced.

#Zambia's copper dependence (October 2021 source booklet)

The facts bank names Zambia's economy and its currency, the kwacha, as "heavily exposed to the world copper price," drawn from the October 2021 source booklet, as real context for 4.3.1 — though the more specific question-level citation this course's research has found from that same booklet (Q7(d)) is anchored to a different spec point (4.3.6, growth and development), not to 4.3.1's characteristics, causes or effects framing directly. Used at exactly the level of detail confirmed, and no further: Zambia is a real, single-commodity-dependent economy whose globalisation exposure runs largely through one channel, the world copper price — meaning the same openness that supplies it export markets and extractive FDI (a benefit, on the Oct 2022 Q9 bullets) is the identical channel that exposes it to commodity-price and terms-of-trade volatility (a cost). No further numeric detail — a specific copper-price move, a specific kwacha figure — is stated here, because none is confirmed in the facts bank for this context.

#Turkey's EU-accession prospects (January 2022 source booklet)

Also named as 4.3.1 real context in the facts bank, from the same January 2022 series whose Section C Q8 is this spec item's own richest causes-essay citation — though the specific question-level citation found from that series' source booklet (Q7(c)) tests customs unions specifically (spec 4.3.2.4), not 4.3.1. Used at the level of detail confirmed: Turkey's EU-accession process is a real instance of political change and trade liberalisation moving together inside one country's own policy choice — deepening the same characteristics (rising trade/GDP, more inward FDI) that Q8's Soviet/China example illustrates for a different country — rather than a separately quantified 4.3.1 citation in its own right.

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#Sources checked for this document

research/veridian/WEC14-verified-facts.md — the "Table of Contents" transcription of spec 4.3.1; the main "4.3.1 Causes and effects of globalisation" section in full; the "Series coverage log" and its June 2025/Summer 2025 addenda; the "wec14/globalisation.ts — Oct 2022 Q9 (effects) + Jan 2022 Q8 (causes), 2026-09-13" mark-scheme-bullet-coverage-audit entry in full, including its independent-tester re-verification note; the 4.3.2.4 entry naming the June 2025 series' China/28-FTA/RCEP source booklet; and the "Flagged issues" and "Topics needing a full lesson build" sections for the migration-gap and FDI-recipient-impact caveats. content/veridian/curriculum/wec14/globalisation.ts — read in full, to confirm what is already taught so nothing here duplicates its mechanism, worked chain, diagram, trap-taxonomy or level-exemplar. content/veridian/technique-hub/wec14/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/wec14.ts — checked directly; contains no entry for this spec point.