The Economic Environment of International Business

Business & Money

Vernon, Raymond

Wells, Louis T.

Economics

PRENTICE/HALL

The authors bridge the gap between strategies of businesses and the actions of governments in international environments. They use economic concepts to help explain the international environment to students and executives. Presents a coherent view of the history and evolution of international business; discusses the economic ideas that managers commonly encounter in interactions with governments and institutions; enhances the manager's understanding of the motives behind government interventions and the implications of intervention; provides an analysis of international agreements that affect multinational business, including GATT, the European Union, and NAFTA.

Manager in the International Economy, The

Rangan, Subramanian

International

With real case stories, Wells and Ahmed bring to life both the hopes for and the failures of international guarantees of property rights for investors in the developing world. Their cases focus on infrastructure projects, but the lessons apply equally to many other investments. In the 1990's inexperienced firms from rich countries jumped directly into huge projects in some of the world's least developed countries. Their investments reflected almost unbridled enthusiasm for emerging markets and trust in new international guarantees. Yet within a few years the business pages of the world press were reporting an exploding number of serious disputes between foreign investors and governments. As the expected bonanzas proved elusive and the protections weaker than anticipated, many foreign investors became disenchanted with emerging markets. So bad were the outcomes in some cases that a few notable infrastructure firms came close to bankruptcy; several others hurriedly fled poor countries as projects soured. In this book, Louis Wells and Rafiq Ahmed show why disputes developed, point out how investments and disputes have changed over time, explore why various firms responded differently to crises, and question the basic wisdom of some of the enthusiasm for privatization. The authors tell how firms, countries, and multilateral development organizations can build a conflict-management system that balances the legitimate economic and social concerns of the host countries and those of investors. Without these changes, multinational corporations will lose profitable opportunities and poor countries will not gain the contributions that foreign investment can make toward alleviating poverty.

Making Foreign Investment Safe: Property Rights and National Sovereignty

Ahmed, Rafiq

Oxford University Press

In the past decade, a number of Third World countries have emerged from their economic status as sources of raw materials or as sweatshops in which low-wage, low-skilled workers produced goods for the richer nations. Now they are themselves manufacturing and consuming high-quality, high-technology products and are establishing foreign subsidiaries, most often in other developing countries. This book is the first to study the significant-growth in foreign direct investment by such countries and its impact on the international economic order.  Third World Multinationals explores the question of why firms based in developing countries have chosen to invest in branches, joint ventures, and wholly-owned subsidiaries overseas rather than simply export goods or enter into licensing arrangements abroad. In addition to the cost of transport, tariff barriers, and import restrictions, it identifies a number of less apparent factors, such as the motivations of managers in wanting to go abroad, the meshing of technological levels, ethnic ties, and the desire to protect proprietary processes and competitive advantages.  The book compares the similarities and differences between these firms and their more established counterparts from the industrialized countries, both large and small. It examines the implications of these developments on the relations between specific home and host countries, and on North-South relations and South-South relations in general. In the face of scarce and unreliable figures, the author has compiled a considerable amount of validated data and viable estimates from numerous world sources. The cases and examples are taken mainly from South America and South and Southeast Asia, those regions that have put forth the largest number of multinational offshoots.  Louis T. Wells, Jr., is Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management, Harvard Business School.

Third World Multinationals: The Rise of Foreign Investment from Developing Countries

Mit Pr

This volume consists of two essays both on the use of tax incentives to attract foreign direct investment. The first essay examines this issue in the context of Indonesia. The authors of this essay contend that tax incentives for foreign investors are not part of the solution but may actually be counterproductive. The second essay in this volume provides a review of earlier literature pertaining to the same issues discussed in the first essay.

Using Tax Incentives to Compete for Foreign Investment: Are They Worth the Costs? (15) (FIAS Occasional Papers)

Allen, Nancy J

Morisset, Jacques

Pirnia, Neda

World Bank Publications

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Books by Wells, Louis T.