This month, air-condition company Carrier Corporation announced it will lay off 1,200 workers in Syracuse, NY. It’s one of a string of sobering announcements from American manufacturers grappling with globalization. The developing world, too, is adjusting to the global economy, and buckling under the pressures of industrialization.

MIT economist Lester Thurow encourages countries to embrace the global economy, but also to know it could go badly wrong and to pay attention. A weakening dollar is the most serious threat he sees. Lax intellectual property laws, deflation, third-world poverty and income gaps threaten, too. But diving in brave, he says, is the only way to go. For fortune, says Lester Thurow, favors the bold.

Click the “Listen” link to hear about globalization and the future of world economies.

Guests:

Lester Thurow, professor of Management and Economics and former dean at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He is also chairman of the Technion Institute of Management in Haifa, Israel and he is author of “Fortune Favors the Bold,” “Building Wealth: New Rules for National Companies and Individuals in a Knowledge-Based Economy” and “Japan’s Economic Recovery.”