Abstract
During the 1950s and 1960s the large multinational enterprise — and primarily the business based in the United States — emerged as a potent agent of economic transformation and development, not only in the more laggard “developed” countries but also in the developing countries of the world. Both economic theory and economic policy have been slow in recognising this phenomenon.
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Notes
Much of this chapter draws on Johnson, “The Multinational Corporation as a Development Agent”, op cit., and on Johnson, “Direct Foreign Investment: a Survey of the Issues”, in Peter Drysdale (ed.), Direct Foreign Investment in Asia and the Pacific ( Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972 ).
Commission on International Development, Partners in Development ( New York: Praeger, for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1969 ).
For a criticism of the Pearson Report see Johnson, The ‘Crisis of Aid’ and the Pearson Report ( Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1970 ).
These issues were explored in the present writer’s study, Economic Policies Toward Less Developed Countries ( Washington: Brookings Institution, 1967 ).
These problems were reviewed in the present writer’s contribution to Johnson (ed.), Trade Strategy for Rich and Poor Countries ( London: Allen & Unwin, for the Trade Policy Research Centre, 1971 ), pp. 10–12.
In the United States, the Petersen Report, presumably reflecting the trend of official American thinking on the aid question, endorsed in broad terms many of the recommendations of the Pearson Report, including the objective of multilateralisation of development assistance. But it refused to urge an increase, or even a standstill, in the level of American development assistance. Thus the Petersen Report lent itself ominously to the interpretation that the United States intended to extricate itself gradually from the aid business through a combination of a reduction of total aid and an abnegation of responsibility for the allocation and administration of the aid it continued to provide. See: Task Force on International Development, US Foreign Assistance in the 1970s: a New Approach, Petersen Report (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1970).
The shift in emphasis away from aid towards trade and investment policies was implicit for instance in Helen Hughes (ed.), Prospects for Partnership: Industrialization and Trade Policies in the 1970s ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1973 ).
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© 1975 Harry G. Johnson and the Trade Policy Research Centre
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Johnson, H.G. (1975). Multinational Enterprises as Agencies for Economic Development. In: Technology and Economic Interdependence. Trade Policy Research Centre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15611-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15611-5_5
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