Pankaj Ghemawat coined a new phrase in his talk from TEDGlobal: “globaloney.”

In other words, Ghemawat takes issue with the idea that national borders are eroding and that we are all just living in “one world.” It’s a notion Ghemawat says was first floated in the 1850s by David Livingston, the Scottish explorer who traveled the Nile, and that persists strongly through today. And yet, says Ghemawat, data shows that it isn’t necessarily true.

“I’m going to suggest that globaloney can be very harmful to your health,” says Ghemawat, the author of Global 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It, in his talk. “If we thought we were already there, there’d be no particular point to pushing harder … Being accurate about how limited globalization levels are is critical to being able to notice that there might be room for something more that would contribute further to global welfare.”

Here are 11 stats that suggest our world is semi-globalized, as opposed to fully globalized.

• Of all the telephone-calling minutes placed in the world last year, only 2% were cross-border calls. As Ghemawat shares in his talk, if you add in calls made online, the percentage boosts up to 6% or 7%. Still, when 400 readers of the Harvard Business Review were asked to guess the percentage in 2011, they estimated a much higher 30%. [HBR Blog]
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• When it comes to online news, the average person does just 1% to 2% of their reading on foreign news sites, says Ghemawat. [Knowledge@Wharton]
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• Even on Facebook, we aren’t as global as we think, says Ghemawat in his talk. Typically, between 10 to 15% of your Facebook friends are from another country than the one in which you live. It’s not a negligible amount, but still not as high as one would expect. Robin Dunbar’s TEDxObserver talk contains many more stats like this. Watch it now >>
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• Most of us also assume that there is significant movement between countries, given that immigration is such a hot-button issue. But as Ghemawat shares in his talk, just 3% of the world’s population are first-generation immigrants. Harvard Business Review readers estimated the percentage at over 20%. [HBR Blog]
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• Globalization seems to be truly at work in education, with international students a presence on many campuses. But, says Ghemawat, only 2% of university students are studying in countries where they are not citizens. [Knowledge@Wharton]

• As the saying goes, “investment knows no boundaries.” But of all the investments made in the world in 2010, not quite 10% were direct foreign investments. Again, Harvard Business Review readers greatly overestimated the percentage at a touch over 30%. [HBR Blog]
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• While official statistics show that the export-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio is about 30%, Ghemawat says that this stat double-counts and triple-counts some goods that contain parts that traveled between countries. Ghemawat consulted with Pascal Lamy, director of the World Trade Organization, who estimates that the real figure would be just under 20%. [HBR Blog]
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• In France, where tensions run high over immigration, people guesstimate that immigrants make up 24% of the population. But the real figure is actually 8%, says Ghemawat in his talk. He believes that knowing the real breakdown might help ease a lot of fears.
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• Meanwhile, Americans greatly overestimate the percent of the federal budget that is devoted to foreign aid. In a study published last year, the median estimate was 25% percent, with survey respondents saying that 10% would be an “appropriate” amount. However, in reality, just 1% of the U.S. federal budget goes to foreign aid. [WorldPublicOpinion.org]
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• In fact, while people estimate that their countries give large amounts of aid to the poor in other nations, a survey by Branko Milanović of the World Bank finds that the ratio of aid given per domestic poor person, when compared to aid given per foreign poor person, is 30,000 to 1. [HBR Blog, MPRA]
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• Ghemawat says that people may even overestimate the effects of globalization on the environment. While people estimate that international shipping and air transport account for 20% of all energy-related CO2 emissions, he says many would be surprised to find that international shipping accounts for 2% to 3% of emissions, while air freight accounts for just 1% to 2%. [Ghemawat.com]

While these stats are fascinating, Ghemawat admits that the data on this topic is limited.

He says, “I would urge you to go away and look for your own data to try and actually assess whether some of these hand-me-down insights that we’ve been bombarded with actually are correct.”

Read more on Ghemawat’s blog.

Pankaj Ghemawat is the author of Global 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It, and he takes the stage to ask an important question: Just how global are we really?

It’s not a new question, of course. It’s one that David Livingstone first floated back in the 1850s, and one that’s been popularized by writers such as Thomas Friedman. But Ghemawat, who notoriously wrote the article The World Is Not Flat, wants us to take a look at some data. He asks the audience: What percentage of all voice calling minutes do you think were international? The answer is 2% (as much as 7% with internet telephony). The audience coos, clearly not expecting the number to be that small.

How about the number of first-generation immigrants? 3%. More “huh”s. Or how much direct investment was foreign? Not quite 10%. The audience gets the gist now, and here’s one last stat. Exports as percent of GDP, according to official statistics around the world, average more than 30%. “But,” he says, “there’s a big problem with the official statistics. If a Japanese component supplier ships something to China to be slotted into an iPod and then it’s shipped to the U.S., it counts multiple times.” It helps to have friends in high places: Ghemawat asked his friend Pascal Lamy, director of the World Trade Organization, to estimate this figure excluding the double-counting and triple-counting. Lamy guessed the figure would be under 20%.

“Clearly, apocalyptically minded authors have overstated the case” for globalization, says Ghemawat. The thing is: many of us seem to agree that the world is flat. “Even though I’m an economist, I find this a pretty large error,” says Ghemawat drily. “This is globaloney.”

Ghemawat didn’t mean to become the evangelist for this way of thinking. He tells us a story of being interviewed for Indian television in Mumbai. “The first question the interviewer asked me was, ‘Professor Ghemawat, why do you believe the world is still round?’ I started laughing; I hadn’t come across that formulation before and I thought I really needed a more coherent response,” he says. “But what I can’t capture for you is the pity and disbelief with which the interviewer asked the question. It’s very cool to talk about the world being one. If you raise questions about that formulation, you are considered a bit of an antique.” This, he says, was a spur to action.

Given the dearth of thoughtful debate about the topic and the peer pressure to take a trendy position, Ghemawat was also inspired by what he calls “techno-trances.” He acknowledges this might be a touchy subject for a TED audience, but ”this is nothing more than an analogy with a well-known finding that if you listen to techno music for a long time it does something to your brainwave activity.” That’s similar with the belief that technology will win out over all. Ghemawat clearly doesn’t agree. So he looked at Facebook. After all, Facebook lowers the barrier to friendship. We should all have friends everywhere now. Right?

Wrong. Typically, up to 15% of your friends are from another country than the one in which you live. “Not negligible,” he acknowledges. “We don’t live in an entirely local or national world, but that’s far from the 95% level you might expect.”

So does all this matter? “Is globaloney just a harmless way to get people to pay more attention to global issues?” he asks. “I’d suggest globaloney can be very harmful to your health.” He has two points to make:

First, recognizing that the glass is only 10-20% full helps us to see that there is plenty of room for additional gains. “If we thought we were already there, there’d be no point in pushing harder,” he says. “Being accurate about how limited globalization levels are is critical to noticing that there might be room for something more that would contribute further to global welfare.”

“Secondly, avoiding overstatement is very helpful, because it reduces and in some cases reverses some of the fears people have about globalization.” For example, where French people guess that immigrants make up 24% of France’s population, the figure is actually 8%. “Maybe realizing that the number is 8% might help cool some of the superheated rhetoric we see around the immigration issue,” he says.

Meanwhile, Americans guess that foreign aid accounts for more than 30% of the U.S. federal budget. The audience laughs. They know what’s coming … the reality is about 1%. Ghemawat suggests that when some people hear the real number, they’re encouraged to invest more. And this, Ghemawat says, is the critical point. By being accurate, by aiming for even small changes, we can have an enormous effect, quickly. “Given how closed we are,” he concludes, “even incremental openness could make things dramatically better.”

Photos: James Duncan Davidson