The temptation to compare the last twenty-five years with the situation prevailing a century ago is a strong one, and many commentators have given in to it. Owing to its open economy, the turn of the twenty-first century is surprisingly like that of the twentieth. Measured by the freedom and intensity of capital flows, the degree of globalisation reached on the eve of the First World War was not surpassed before the nineties. For us, the main difference is of course our inability to anticipate how the current process will evolve in the future. Instead of trying, in vain, to use history for predictive purposes, we are better served by placing the changes of the last quarter of a century in a historical perspective. For while there is some continuity with the previous period, globalisation having started in the 1960s, there was unquestionably a break around 1980. Rather than a single event, it was a series of changes, both quantitative (volume of transactions) and qualitative (the kind of financial instruments), that launched this new phase that still endured twenty-five years later. For all that, the specificities of the late twentieth century characterised in particular by the end of the cold war and the arrival of the post-industrial society, should not be overlooked.

The new world economy

On an economic and financial level, three major characteristics, closely linked to each other, define this new era: globalisation, deregulation and innovation. The first has been hotly debated since the early 1990s.