This article from the World Economic Forum looks at various stages proceeding globalisation and uses one metric of exports as % of global GDP to determine how 'globalised' the world is. I was wondering if there are any other quantifiable numbers that could be used to measure the level of globalisation at a certain point in history.
The social component of globalisation is probably harder to quantify, but what about the economic and political ones?
The KOF Globalisation Index and its derivatives, e.g. used in Bertelsmann Stiftung studies, are a per-country measure with several components:
three sub-indices: the economy (weighting: 60 percent), social dimensions and politics (weighting: 20 percent each). The Economy sub-index provides indicators for crossborder ties in the areas of trade in goods and services as well as wages and capital flows. The transaction metrics also include transaction restrictions and capital controls. The social dimension includes indicators for cultural proximity and personal contacts, among others. Political globalization is also reflected in a third sub-index. This dimension takes account of aspects such as the number of international treaties or membership in international organizations.
As it is designed, the index tends to "favor" (i.e. giver higher scores) to EU countries because they are counted separately but obviously have close ties with each other. In contrast, China gets a relative low score in this index because the measures are also taken in proportion to the country's economy and China's isn't as integrated with the rest of the world...
it is necessary to remember that transaction metrics are not absolute values, but rather stand in relation to economic output. This calculation is necessary for producing the index so that different sized economies can be compared. For the second-largest economy in the world, this relative method tends to lead to lower scores, among others for portfolio investments (7% of GDP – 42nd place), for foreign direct investments (23% of GDP – 41st place) and for trade in services (6% of GDP – 40th place). Even in trade, the export nation of China occupies only 38th place with an export volume of 31% relative to gross domestic product.
Generally speaking, the index has shown consistent and correlated growth among countries:
The 2019 revised edition of the KOH index now distinguishes between "de facto" and "de jure" globalisation, but also aggregates them as one figure, eventually.
While de facto globalization measures actual international flows and activities, de jure globalization measures policies and conditions that, in principle, enable, facilitate and foster flows and activities. Quinn et al. (2011) show, for example, that the decision to use either de facto or de jure measures of financial openness gives rise to systematically different findings in the financial openness-economic growth nexus. [...]
The home page of the index has some interactive world maps and graphs. Playing a bit with that, China mirrors the world average (well it's a bit above it but roughly tracks/influences it) since the year 2000 or so.
What are the metrics of globalisation?
The DHL Global Connectedness Index measures globalization based on trade, capital, information, and people flows.
Global Connectedness refers to the depth and breadth of a country’s integration with the rest of the world, as manifested by its participation in international flows of products and services, capital, information, and people.
The DHL Global Connectedness Index is built primarily from internationally comparable data from multi-country sources, with additional data drawn from national statistics.
The overall index is built up from its constituent components via three steps, as illustrated in Figure 26. First, the individual components are aggregated into pillars, resulting in the computation of distinct pillars of the same type for depth and breadth. Then, overall depth and breadth scores are computed using the weighting scheme listed in Table 3. In step 3, these two dimensions of the analysis are averaged to produce the DHL Global Connectedness Index, applying equal weights to both.
