Since the end of World War II, groups such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Union, and G-20 have sprung up with a variety of missions, including promoting trade, ensuring financial stability, eradicating poverty, and advancing sustainable economic growth. Behind these worthy goals is the ultimate aim: preventing the kind of global economic instability that can easily lead to war.

But while such organizations are trying to knit the world more tightly together, in many countries the voices of populism and nationalism are objecting that the price of lost sovereignty is too high and that traditions and customs are being lost. Furthermore, such organizations have the failings common to all human institutions. Do they really work? Have some saved us from disaster? Are we better off without others? What is the best route to prosperity, and do these groups help smooth the way or obstruct it?

International Economic Institutions: Globalism vs. Nationalism uses these influential bodies as a lens to study today's globalized economy. In 24 eye-opening half-hour lectures, award-winning teacher and economist Professor Ramon P. DeGennaro of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, conducts you through the dizzying array of institutions, their backgrounds, their goals, and the important roles they play in the economic life of the entire world.