The Implications of the Economic Theory of the Multinational Enterprise for Control at the International Level

It fiddles its accounts. It avoids or evades it taxes. It rigs intra-company transfer prices. It is run by foreigners from decision centres thousands of miles away. It imports foreign labour practices. It doesn’t import foreign labour practices. It overpays. It underpays. It competes unfairly with local firms. It is in cahoots with local firms. It exports jobs from rich countries. It is an instrument of rich countries’ imperialism. The technologies it brings to the third world are old-fashioned. No, they are too modern. It meddles. It bribes. Nobody can control it. It wrecks balances of payments. It overturns economic policies. It plays off governments against each other to get the biggest investment incentives. Won’t it please come and invest. Let it bloody well go home.

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‘It’, of course, is the multinational enterprise. This chapter seeks to evaluate in the light of the theory of the multinational enterprise the proposal that such firms need to be brought under the control of national governments and/or international (supranational) bodies.