Economic, foreign trade and globalisation aspects of the fourth industrial revolution

Abstract

The article deals with major technological transformations of the Fourth industrial revolution, their economic and foreign economic effects. The high rate of diffusion of new technologies and the factors contributing to this process are noted. Many of the so called disruptive technologies, including blockchain, artificial intelligence, digital platforms, 3D printing, mobile payment systems, lead to dramatic changes in international trade, ways it is conducted and composition of its participants, competitiveness factors and methods of competition and together have the potential to change the qualitative parameters of globalization development. The author believes that the world with the onset of a new digital reality goes into the stage of super-globalization with previously unattainable degree of mobility of services and the key factors of production – ideas, technologies, intellectual work in a globalized virtual space. At the same time, new elements are emerging in the depths of the globalization process in the form of distributed manufacturing, which ensures localization of product’s output directly at the place of its consumption. However the global virtual shell for the exchange of data, technology, know-how is maintained and further enhanced. For this stage of globalization, the author introduces new concepts - “hybrid globalization” or “new glocalization”.