Foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational corporations (MNCs)--for better and worse--play a large and growing role in shaping our world. The integrating thesis of this book is the inevitability of heterogeneity in FDI and MNCs and, accordingly, the imperative of disaggregation. Large companies doing business on a global basis increasingly dominate the production and marketing of the world's goods and services. The importance of these companies continues to grow while the debate about their nature and effects remains mired in a long-standing stalemate couched in strong black and white terms. Stephen D. Cohen seeks to reconcile this impasse by analyzing multinational corporations and foreign direct investment in an eclectic, nuanced manner. The core thesis is that an accurate understanding of the nature and impact of these phenomena comes from acknowledging the dominance of heterogeneity, perceptions, and ambiguity and the paucity of universal truths. This approach should contribute significantly to both a better academic understanding and a more productive policy debate of an increasingly important element of the world economy.

If political power is directly related to economic wealth, then multinational corporations are powerful actors in the international system. The sales of some are greater than the gross national product of some of the most economically advanced countries in the world. This book examines key political and economic factors that influence the behavior of multinationals when they decide where to make direct investments, as well as how their investment decisions affect the development process and policies in host countries. It also looks for discernible patterns in the behavior of multinationals that originate in different home countries. These include corporations from Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries that are members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Japan, and the United States.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is establishing significant connectivity networks, including a complex network of aviation e-services and trade network systems. It has promoted economic and financial development in regions covered by the BRI in terms of infrastructure construction and interconnection and attracted large foreign direct investment flows. At the bottom of the escalation of the China-US trade dispute is a more fundamental shift where China has become the US’s strategic competitor, and political-economic tensions have continued to climb. Opportunities and Challenges for Multinational Enterprises and Foreign Direct Investment in the Belt and Road Initiative analyzes the opportunities and challenges of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and cross-border foreign investments transactions. This valuable reference adopts an economic and international business perspective to address these issues and presents novel and state-of-the-art research insights into the role of MNEs and their influence on the Silk Road Economic Belt. Covering topics such as economic determinants, foreign direct investment promotion policies, and trade gravity model, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for business leaders and CEOs, policymakers, geopolitical experts, politicians, government officials, sociologists, libraries, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

Attracting the investment of multinational corporations, foreign direct investment, has become a central economic development strategy of developed and developing countries. Jensen explores how government policies and political institutions affect patterns of FDI by utilising quantitative FDI data.

How can Africa, the world’s most lagging region, benefit from globalisation and achieve sustained economic growth? Africa needs greater investment by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) to improve competitiveness and generate more growth through positive spill-over effects. Despite the fact that Africa’s returns on investment averaged 29% since 1990, Africa has gained merely 1% of global Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows. The challenge for African countries is how to be a more desirable destination for FDI. The study integrates three currents of economic research, namely from the literature on (endogenous) economic growth, convergence and regional integration, the explanations for Africa’s poor growth and the growing understanding of the role of MNEs in a global economy. The empirical side of the book is based on an econometric study of the determinants of FDI in Africa as well as a detailed firm-level survey conducted in 2000.

This Festschrift in honour of Professor Yair Aharoni, a pioneer in the field of international business, looks at several of these new trends in FDI, what they will mean for firms and governments, and the opportunities created by these developments to enrich or extend extant theory.

Monograph on the role of USA based multinational enterprise and influence on international relations - covers historical origins, social role, labour relations, technology transfer, taxation, ethics, balance of payments, international organization and mechanisms for control and regulation, etc. Bibliography pp. 322 to 326, references and statistical tables.

Carsten Wendt analyses the necessity, the concept as well as potential advantages and effects of a common tax base for multinational enterprises in the European Union. He addresses important issues concerning a common tax base, such as the definition of the consolidated group, the technique and scope of consolidation and the formula used to allocate the consolidated tax base among the involved member states.