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- Volume 23, Issue 3, 2017
Transnational Corporations - Volume 23, Issue 3, 2017
Volume 23, Issue 3, 2017
Transnational Corporations is a policy-oriented journal that serves as a specialized forum for the publication of research on the activities of transactional corporations and their implication for economic development.
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Foreign direct investment as a catalyst for domestic firm development: The case of Sri Lanka
Authors: Palitha Konara and Yingqi WeiForeign direct investment (FDI) carried out by multinational enterprises (MNEs) is recognized as a mechanism through which domestic firms can learn and improve competitiveness. Unlike the extant literature, which tends to focus on the aggregate effects of FDI in Sri Lanka, we investigate the role of FDI for domestic firm development at the firm level. Using World Bank Enterprise Survey data supplemented by industry data, preliminary investigation reveals that, compared with domestic firms, MNEs are larger, more productive, more profitable and more active in research and development (R&D). MNEs hire higher proportions of skilled workers and undertake more in-house training programs. They are also more export-oriented but rely more on inputs of foreign origin. The gaps between foreign and domestic firms indicate the potential that Sri Lankan firms can learn from MNEs and from FDI. The econometric study on firm-level productivity indicates positive direct effects and negative spillover effects of FDI on domestic firms. The findings have important policy implications.
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Back from oblivion? The rise and fall of the early initiatives against corporate tax avoidance from the 1960s to the 1980s
Author: Matti YlönenTax 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.
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Book review
No issue is of greater consequence to the rapidly expanding field of international investment law than the issue of whether sovereign states should continue to utilize existing mechanisms for the arbitration of investment disputes with investors. Jean Kalicki and Anna Joubin-Bret have made a magnificent contribution to the discussion of that issue with their collection of papers. This book is neither an assault upon, nor an apology for, investor-state arbitration. Rather, the contributors to this volume have sought a middle ground by endeavouring to propose very concrete ways in which to reform investor-state arbitration in response to many of the most common criticisms of that form of investment dispute resolution.
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