Multinational Excursions

Charles P. Kindleberger is widely regarded as among the most accessible and intelligent practitioners of the economist’s craft. This collection of his papers and lectures, articles and reviews, prepared over the past decade, focuses on the role of multinational corporations in the international economy, their relationships with home and host countries (both developed and less developed), the determinants of their size, the impetus to their investment behavior, their history, the literature about them, and their regulation. Chapters relate the phenomenon of the multinational corporation to the body of economic theory. They discuss multinational corporations in world affairs, size of firm and size of nation, the clash of economics and sociology and politics in the internationalization of business, restrictions on direct investment in host countries, direct investment in less developed countries and in militant developing nations, ownership and contract in international business, and multinationals and the small open economy. The origins of United States direct investment in France, and international banks and international business are taken up, followed by Kindleberger’s reviews of major books on the multinational corporation and including his criticisms of such popular writing as Barnet and Moller’s Global Reach, and Magdoff’s Age of Imperialism. Kindleberger’s policy statements before various national and international governments, in which he proposes the creation of a loose framework among national authorities to harmonize policies toward the multinational corporation are also included.