International Trade and Finance
The Changing FDI Landscape in ASEAN
Measuring success in the global economy: International trade, industrial upgrading, and business function outsourcing in global value chains
Multinationals and Economic Geography: Location, technology and innovation
World Investment Report 2010: Investing in a low-carbon economy (Overview) Key Messages – FDI Trends and Prospects
Global value chains and the fragmentation of trade policy coalitions
Recent decades have seen the emergence of global value chain (GVC) production arrangements in which firms fine-slice production processes and disperse activities over multiple countries. This paper analyses how the rise of GVCs affects trade politics in developed countries. Our theoretical model shows that GVCs drive a wedge between the interests of workers and of managers in unskilled-labourintensive industries, upsetting a traditional coalition that has favoured protectionism against competing imports. Managers of GVC firms switch towards favouring trade promotion since they can substitute foreign for local unskilled workers. The loss of their management ally further weakens the position of low-skilled workers, whose jobs and income are threatened by foreign competition. This new trend may help to explain the recent surge in anti-trade sentiment, while indicating the importance of an active policy response to deal with the economic challenges for affected
Internationalization of TNCs from the extractive industries: A literature review
Substituting expats with locals: TNCs and the indigenization policies of Saudi Arabia
Owing to rising unemployment among Saudi nationals, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has instituted Saudization, a localization policy that strives to induce the employment of more Saudi nationals in the private sector. A major gap in the literature is the lack of empirical investigation regarding the relationships between indigenization and the underlying principles of its process. This study seeks to fill this gap. The study assesses the success or otherwise of the Saudization initiative empirically and uncovers several features. It finds that TNCs that experience the external pressures to localize their workforce, and those that wish to enhance their social legitimacy, are more likely to comply with Saudization. Furthermore, TNCs do not believe that the process of localization provides them with economic gains. Legal coercion to adhere to the Saudization initiative turns out to be a highly significant instrument in making TNCs adhere to the localization process. The study also finds that neither age nor the size of the firm have an impact on the Saudization programme. Implications for theory and practice are drawn out.
John Dunning’s writings on development: Gradualism, agency and meaning
A proposal to improve UNCTAD’s inward FDI potential index
Back from oblivion? The rise and fall of the early initiatives against corporate tax avoidance from the 1960s to the 1980s
Tax havens and tax avoidance have gathered much interest, e.g., in the United Nations (UN) negotiations on the post-2015 development goals. The analyses of initiatives against corporate tax avoidance typically focus on developments from the mid-1990s onward. This article shows that contrary to the common perception, the country-by-country reporting initiative and many of the other contemporary policy responses had already been developed and discussed in the 1970s by the United Nations Commission and Centre for Transnational Corporations. I demonstrate how the weakening of the policy community of the UN and the failure of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to refer to the earlier discussions, not only in the UN but also in the OECD, contributed to the passing into oblivion of these ideas. Other factors were the reframing of the UN work on multinational enterprises to human rights issues and the transformation of academic theories of the firm. The examples demonstrate how ideas shape world politics and how the oblivion of certain ideas can have concrete impacts on the power relations between its actors. The oblivion of the earlier debates paved the way for the triumph of more business-friendly discourses centred on the anti-corruption and corporate social responsibility arguments.
Overcoming financing constraints to corporate expansion: Evidence from a company in an emerging Islamic market
The role of the network coordinator in the attraction of foreign investment in R&D: The case of the Brazilian oil and gas industry
Covid-19 and investment — an UNCTAD research round-up of the international pandemic’s effect on FDI flows and policy
The shuttering of commercial activity in the face of the Corona (Covid-19) pandemic will have a dramatic effect on the global economy. UNCTADs Division on Investment and Enterprise has been monitoring the impact on investment, as well as its implications for development.1 In the face of the unprecedented circumstances, this issue of the Transnational Corporations furnishes a brief overview of this work, notably from the perspective of foreign direct investment (FDI) and investment policy. UNCTADs World Investment Report (forthcoming, June 2020) will provide an expanded and in-depth analysis of FDI trends and investment policy developments that also accounts for the impact of the pandemic.
Towards a forward-looking and policy-orientated research agenda
Emerging market MNEs and social responsibility: An institutional pressure perspective
Has outward foreign direct investment contributed to the development of the Chinese economy?
Research and literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic development have to date focused almost entirely on development in the host economy, sidelining the question of any contribution to development in a multinational enterprise’s country of origin. To address this shortcoming in research on FDI, this study investigates whether Chinese outward FDI can be seen as having made a contribution to the development of the mainland Chinese economy over the past three decades. It finds that the activity of Chinese enterprises in pursuing assets and advantages abroad through outward FDI yields four categories of returns: financial, capability, capacity and macroeconomic. These returns have addressed some of the specific challenges that China has faced in the process of its economic development, although the extent and importance of the development contribution remains uncertain. Outward FDI can play both a complementary and a supplementary role to development benefits realized from opening up to international trade and inward FDI, and from emigration.
Surender Munjal. The Eclectic Paradigm: A Framework for Synthesizing and Comparing Theories of International Business from Different Disciplines or Perspectives, edited by John Cantwell
This edited volume by John Cantwell, the outgoing editor-in-chief of Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), presents a special compilation of articles on the eclectic paradigm. Cantwell has done an excellent job in selecting articles from JIBS, which is the leading journal in the field of international business (IB), and writing up the introductory piece. The book has nine chapters including the introduction by Cantwell, which provides a holistic account of the eclectic paradigm – how it emerged and developed over time. The introduction is split into five sections: a) the origins of the eclectic paradigm; b) the age of the powerful hierarchical large firm, and rising industrial concentration; c) the age of the knowledge-driven global economy; d) the “new age” of more open and informal business networks; and e) the eclectic paradigm in the new era.
Developing an international regime for transnational corporations: The importance of insolvency law to sustainable recovery and development
Uncovering the institutional foundations of specialization patterns in the Indian pharmaceutical industry
This article identifies the institutional foundations of the comparative advantages of the Indian pharmaceutical industry in generic bulk drugs, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and final dosages, and formulations manufacturing. Through studying six institutional areas in connection with the internationalization strategies of nine Indian pharmaceutical firms, this study illustrates how these comparative advantages have been evolving since liberalization of the Indian economy. It demonstrates how, in the post-liberalization era, both up-market outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and the rise of contract-based partnerships are altering the way in which Indian pharmaceutical firms coordinate their action in the local sector. The shift towards more contact-based forms of coordination could support an industry-wide transition towards specialization in novel drug discovery and development. Although firms, especially larger ones, have been the main orchestrators of this shift, this study concludes that mainstreaming the necessary institutional mechanisms across the industry and employing the appropriate policy tools will be critical to supporting this transition.