Firms In The International Economy

"Impressive... This is an evidence-based bottom-up account of the realities of globalisation. It is more varied, more subtle, and more substantial than many of the popular works available on the subject." -- Financial Times Based on a five-year study by the MIT Industrial Performance Center, How We Compete goes into the trenches of over 500 international companies to discover which practices are succeeding in today’s global economy, which are failing –and why. There is a rising fear in America that no job is safe. In industry after industry, jobs seem to be moving to low-wage countries in Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe. Production once handled entirely in U.S. factories is now broken into pieces and farmed out to locations around the world. To discover whether our current fears about globalization are justified, Suzanne Berger and a group of MIT researchers went to the front lines, visiting workplaces and factories around the world. They conducted interviews with managers at more than 500 companies, asking questions about which parts of the manufacturing process are carried out in their own plants and which are outsourced, who their biggest competitors are, and how they plan to grow their businesses. How We Compete presents their fascinating, and often surprising, conclusions. Berger and her team examined businesses where technology changes rapidly–such as electronics and software–as well as more traditional sectors, like the automobile industry, clothing, and textile industries. They compared the strategies and success of high-tech companies like Intel and Sony, who manufacture their products in their own plants, and Cisco and Dell, who rely primarily on outsourcing. They looked closely at textile and clothing to uncover why some companies, including the Gap and Liz Claiborne, choose to outsource production to foreign countries, while others, such as Zara and Benetton, base most operations at home. What emerged was far more complicated than the black-and-white picture presented by promoters and opponents of globalization. Contrary to popular belief, cheap labor is not the answer, and the world is not flat, as Thomas Friedman would have it. How We Compete shows that there are many different ways to win in the global economy, and that the avenues open to American companies are much wider than we ever imagined. SUZANNE BERGER is the Raphael Dorman and Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science at MIT and director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative. She was a member of the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity, whose report Made in America analyzed weaknesses and strengths in U.S. industry in the 1980s. She lives in Boston , Massachusetts.

Combining economics and business perspectives, this undergraduate textbook explores key principles of the world economy through a uniquely integrated lens.

Depending on one's point of view, multinational enterprises are either the heroes or the villains of the globalized economy. Governments compete fiercely for foreign direct investment by such companies, but complain when firms go global and move their activities elsewhere. Multinationals are seen by some as threats to national identities and wealth and are accused of riding roughshod over national laws and of exploiting cheap labor. However, the debate on these companies and foreign direct investment is rarely grounded on sound economic arguments. This book brings clarity to the debate. With the contribution of other leading experts, Giorgio Barba Navaretti and Anthony Venables assess the determinants of multinationals' actions, investigating why their activity has expanded so rapidly, and why some countries have seen more such activity than others. They analyze their effects on countries that are recipients of inward investments, and on those countries that see multinational firms moving jobs abroad. The arguments are made using modern advances in economic analysis, a case study, and by drawing on the extensive empirical literature that assesses the determinants and consequences of activity by multinationals. The treatment is rigorous, yet accessible to all readers with a background in economics, whether students or professionals. Drawing out policy implications, the authors conclude that multinational enterprises are generally a force for the promotion of prosperity in the world economy.

Presents a new research program that is transforming the study of international trade. Until a few years ago, models of international trade did not recognize the heterogeneity of firms and exporters, and could not provide good explanations of international production networks. Now such models exist and are explored in this volume.

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Essays by leading scholars suggest that insights from international business could enrich firm heterogeneity research in international economics. Despite their common roots, international economics (IE) and international business (IB) have developed into two distinct fields of study. Economists have directed their efforts at formalizing the workings of international trade and investment at the macroeconomic level; business scholars have relied more on data-driven conceptual narratives than mathematical tools. But the recent focus of IE literature on firm heterogeneity suggests that IE would benefit from IB analyses of the behavior and organization of the internationalizing firm. The contributions to this volume investigate ways that insights from IB can enrich IE research in firm heterogeneity. The contributors discuss firm-specific advantages in international trade and investment, considering the firm as the unit of analysis and managerial inputs as a variable in market entry decisions; analyze interactions between a firm and its external environment, including local corporate philanthropy and institutional settings; examine the boundaries of the firm and organizational choices such as the make-or-buy decision; and investigate technology transfer and innovation offshoring, discussing the role of subsidiaries, inventor employment, and other related topics. Although IE and IB look at international firms from different perspectives, these contributions make it clear that there is a potential for a productive exchange of insights and information between the two disciplines. Contributors Laura Abramovsky, Carlo Altomonte, Sjoerd Beugelsdijk, Bruce Blonigen, Pamela Bombarda, Steven Brakman, Julia Darby, Rodolphe Desbordes, Filippo Di Mauro, María García-Vega, Harry Garretsen, Elena Huergo, Florian Mayneris, Quyen T. K. Nguyen, Verena Nowak, Cheyney O'Fallon, Gianmarco Ottaviano, Michael Pflüger, Filomena Pietrovito, Sandra Poncet, Alberto Franco Pozzolo, Alan M. Rugman, Armando Rungi, Stephan Russek, Davide Sala, Luca Salvatici, Christian Schwarz, Roger Smeets, Jens Suedekum, Hans van Ees, Vincent Vicard, Ian Wooton, Erdal Yalcin

The adoption of pro-market economic reforms by emerging market economies in last two decades has transformed the institutional context for firms in these economies. The objective of this volume is to better understand how domestic and foreign firms have transformed their strategy, organization and management system in response to this change.

In the last four decades the world has been significantly impacted by globalization and rapid technological changes. This in turn had major effects on the global economy. Several developing and socialist economies that earlier followed closed door and import substitution policies started to open up their economies to world trade and investments. Some such countries, as India, managed to achieve a degree of economic prosperity over the last few years after opening up their economy. The analyses in this book show that there are significant benefits from international trade and investment to emerging economies that possess critical-level initial conditions in technology, infrastructure, and ease of doing business, and also have friendly policies. Focusing on Indian firms, the book spans the period from the pre-reform era to the post-reform era, when the market was responding to policy reforms and global market dynamics. The reforms, it argues, resulted in positive outcomes of increased outward orientation and annual growth rates. The book also comments on the economic and institutional factors that change over time, locally as well as globally, and affect the behaviour of firms and industries.

This book analyses the vertical relationships of firms in an international context. These relationships, Khalid Sekkat argues, have gained further relevance due to the notable increase in vertical specialization of production across borders in the past few years.

The Dynamics of International Business offers a comparative, chronological overview of the strategic and structural evolution of international firms. Organized around eras of global economic development, the text synthesizes research on the internationalization of firms, highlighting crucial turning points in the evolution of the international economy. A particular emphasis is placed on the relationship between historical evidence and the theoretical frameworks available for its interpretation. Each period is illustrated by a selection of short case studies from a variety of industry sectors, including the Levant Company, Nestlé, Singer, Saint Gobain and NEC. An essential textbook for courses in business and economic history, this book will also be a valuable resource for scholars and students of international business more generally.