Lately it has become fashionable to question whether globalization and its benefits have peaked or are even about to reverse themselves. Pundits cite protectionist pronouncements by politicians and predict a backlash against global economic integration. But their statements are usually short on data, and that's no surprise. The numbers tell a decidedly different story.

The self-appointed oracles have been nothing if not provocative. Steven Weber and three co-authors tell "How Globalization Went Bad" in the current issue of Foreign Policy, warning that globalization is helping to encourage crime, terrorism and the spread of disease. Meanwhile, Rawi Abdelal and Adam Segal ask "Has Globalization Passed Its Peak?" in this month's Foreign Affairs. They conclude that "globalization as a process will continue to sputter along" but equally that "signs of the current slowdown in globalization have been obvious for some time."

What signs are those? By almost any major metric, the integration of the global economy is continuing apace and even accelerating. Exports of merchandise rose by two-thirds from 2000 to 2005, according to the World Trade Organization, as did trade in commercial services. Both types of trade also made up a greater share of the world's gross domestic product in every single year.

The story in corporate finance is much the same. The value of global mergers and acquisitions rose 38 percent in 2006 from 2005 and was 11 percent higher than in 2000, its previous peak. A worldwide survey this autumn by Global M&A, an investment firm specializing in cross-border transactions, found that 59 percent of the professionals who responded expected merger activity to keep growing in the early part of this year, and 70 percent anticipated higher cross-border, mid- market activity during the same period.

Investors are also becoming more steadily globalized. The longstanding American bias toward domestic securities has diminished, if target markets are weighted by market capitalization, according to a working paper released last month by the Bank for International Settlements. An earlier report by the bank described surging foreign exchange activity driven by yield- hungry institutional investors and hedgers from around the world.

Even individual workers are stretching further around the globe. Migration slowed in the 1990s, with the world's stock of migrants growing only 1.3 percent a year, according to data from the International Organization for Migration. But the pace has picked up again. The organization's world migration report estimated that there were 190 million migrants in early 2005, implying annual growth of 1.7 percent in the first half of this decade.

Cultural exchanges have increased as well, as evidenced by the growing number of foreign films — especially Chinese — given a wide release in the United States and Europe. And you only need to look around for anecdotal evidence of further globalization: Western universities founding campuses in the Middle East and East Asia, art from China on sale in London's top auction houses, African bands touring the United States and Japanese fast-food chains opening everywhere.

Undoubtedly the Internet will also continue to heighten such exchanges as well as carrying commercial tools to more far-flung locales. What used to be an e-mail-only medium has become a clearing house for pictures, sound and now, spectacularly, video.

These trends suggest acceleration, not a slowdown. And even if the figures for 2006 showed lower growth rates, a responsible statistician wouldn't automatically assume a retrenchment. Economic processes rarely run in one direction all the time. Just consider the business cycle of any mature economy: there are peaks and troughs, but in the long run there is growth. When you consider the idiosyncratic events that can push globalization along — new technologies, changes in regulations, shifts in consumer preferences — it would be very strange indeed if the overall trend didn't move in fits and starts.

Still, the protectionist gripes do have the potential to cause a fit or a start, and they occasionally have a solid economic motivation. The costs of adjusting to a more connected world can be lessened when they are borne over time rather than all at once. That is why tariffs and state control of industries are usually phased out, with retraining programs for workers sometimes introduced.

It also stands to reason that globalization has made it easier for infectious diseases to jump from continent to continent or for terrorist literature to spread from country to country.

To some observers it may be attractive to put the brakes on globalization in an effort to cope better with these challenges.

Yet the debate will be lopsided unless it considers the ways globalization has improved economic well-being. The Chinese and Indian booms that have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty have relied on growing economic openness, both in those two countries and in their major export markets.

To understand the scale of this progress, imagine taking the entire population of the European Union and moving it from subsistence farming to a middle-class lifestyle.

Fortunately, that progress against poverty doesn't seem to be slowing down, which probably means that globalization isn't either.