Journal of Islamic and Human Advanced Research, Vol. 4, Issue 2, June 2014, 27-39 72 Can Economic Globalization be Measured? Mahmoud Khalid Almsafir and Ali Mohammed Khalel Al- Shawaf Graduate Business School, College of Graduate Studies, Universiti Tenaga Nasional , Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, 34000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia mahmoud@uniten.edu.my, ali.alshawaf2@gmail.com Article Info Received: 23.04.2014 Accepted:10.05.2014 Published online: 01.06.2014 ISSN: 2231-8968 ABSTRACT Globalization has many meanings but it is generally defined as economic and political interdependence on a worldwide scale through the increasing speed, ease, and extent with which goods, capital, services, technologies, people, cultures, information and ideas cross borders all around the world. In this paper, three definitions, from IMF, WB and European Commission, of eeconomic globalization were adopted. From this, four aspects of trade, capital movement, movement of people and spread of knowledge and technology were branched out into 11 variables. Each variable were looked at and discussed in its current relevance to economic globalization. It can be concluded that with this updated identified variables, it can be adopted to measure the level of economic globalization in future studies. Keywords: Economic Globalization, Trade, Capital Movements, Movement of People, Spread of Knowledge. Introduction Globalization is a greatly debated topic over its advantages and disadvantages. Amongst its many advantages, globalization has highlighted the importance of emphasizing on growth in terms of economic indicators such as per capita income, Gross Domestic Product, Gross National product, external investments, external trade including import and export of goods, rate of economic growth, and new technology among other things. This means that economic globalization looks into the development patterns of economics in the world by state corporations nationally and internationally. According to IMF (2008), there are many indicators that suggested that the world is more globalized: trade (goods and services) as a percentage of global GDP has increased from 42.1% in 1980 to 62.1% in 2007; the indicator of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to global GDP increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 31.8% in 2006; the level of international money demand (especially bank loans) as percentage of world GDP rose from around 10% in 1980 to 48% in 2006; the number of