Contributors
"Contributors" Further, the department told the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, domestic employment attributed to U.S.-based multinationals grew faster between 1966 and 1970...
...Tariff Commission, command more than $250 billion in assets...
...It will have to create the jobs itself if multinational "X" prefers capital-intensive investment...
...200 of them generate annual sales of more than $1 billion...
...The more effective economic integration is among member countries," the UN counsels, "the greater their collective ability to present a countervailing force to multinational corporations...
...And if Liberia presses the tax question, "X" can peddle its investment in a more hospitable country...
...The story, which quotes from the journal European Chemical News, describes industry dissatisfaction over the "unbending principles" of government price decisions: "Continued Government intransigence on chemical price increases could become the sole reason for Britain's chemical producers concentrating their next round of investment outside the United Kingdom . . . . " The multinational challenge to sovereignty has captured the UN's imagination in much the same way that Senator Kennedy's health care program impressed the American Medical Association...
...The UN has similarly urged governments to renounce foreign economic intervention...
...An important question is that of competition: will natural economic forces prevent the domination of world markets by a handful of corporate conspirators...
...In a study published jointly by the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, Professor Demsetz wrote: "New data . . . indicate strongly that the productive efficiency of large firms relative to small firms is correlated with market concentration...
...Will market discipline operate on a global scale among a relatively small number of producers...
...More significantly, he notes, recent research shows "correlations between market concentration and various measures of market power to be less persistent and considerably weaker or even nonexistent than in the earlier work...
...To what avail if the local branches of multinational banks will not cooperate...
...is economic news editor of the Wall S t r e e t J o u r n a l . . . D.W...
...But whether such forbearance is possible for a socialist state, one that owns outright a threatened "corporation," is doubtful...
...At least two studies suggest that the answer to these questions is yes...
...Is Jamaica trying to restrict credit...
...No single jurisdiction can cope adequately with the global phenomenon of the multinational corporation," the UN report concedes, "nor is there a (competent) international authority...
...But as private and public interests began to merge with the expansion of state power, it became apparent-notably to Friedrich A. Hayek---that only trade between individuals serves peace...
...In some industries--including automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and fabricated metal products--the proportion exceeds t~-ee-quarters...
...Further, the department told the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, domestic employment attributed to U.S.-based multinationals grew faster between 1966 and 1970 than other nongovernmental employment...
...The peaceful influence of international trade on foreign relations is one tenet of nineteenth-century liberalism that still enjoys a respectable following...
...The report urges governments to form regional bargaining units, the better to wring concessions from multinationals while offering them larger, more integrated marketing areas...
...In light of the warm reception given wage-price controls by the Republic's businessmen, we might indeed ask whether they have the will, the power, or the desire to resist heightened government control at 8 The Alternative January 1974...
...Profit, he observed, is a far more stable force than nationalism: "If the resources of different nations are treated as exclusive properties of these nations as wholes, if international economic relations, instead of being relations among individuals become relations between whole nations organized as trading bodies, they inevitably become the source of friction and envy between whole nations...
...Yet doubts remain, if not over jobs and income, then certainly over size and market power...
...Goneen asks trenchantly...
...Even if Professor Demsetz's data prove iron-clad, the insecurity of states in the face of mobile and efficient private power isn't likely to diminish...
...Anthony Sampson paraphrased Harold Geneen, czar of the ITr empire, as declaring his company "above governments, above controls and above morals" (Anthony Sampson, The Sovereign State of ~ Stein and Day, 1973...
...Many wonder whether a corporation that relies on the advice of the Commerce Department and the backing of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation can really be called its own agent...
...Cooper is a regular contributor to these pages . . . Allen Crawford is a student at Indiana University . . . J. Tim Fennell is studying for his doctorate in political science at the University of California at ~ Angeles . . . Carl Gershman is director of the Youth Committee of Peace and Democracy in the Middle East and National Chairman of the Young People's Socialist League . . . .James Grant is on the staff of the Baltimore Morning Sun . . . Sidney Hook, professor emeritus of philosophy from New York University, is now working at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace . . . Charles S. Hyneman, Distinguished Service professor of government from Indiana University, now works at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars...
...If trade (or foreign manufacturing) reaches sufficient proportions, many reason, conflict will become unthinkable: "Declare dividends, not war...
...The statistics are awesome: multinational corporations, according to the U.S...
...The authors' data indicate that beyond a certain minimum size---modern research, development, and marketing costs require sizable outlays of capital---growth can petrify, rendering giants vulnerable to smaller, more agile competitors...
...See Charles P. Kindleberger, ed., The I n t e r n a - t i o n a l Corporation MIT Press, 1970...
...Does Liberia want more jobs and more tax revenues...
...The United Nations reports that international production---production "subject to foreign control or decision"surpassed trade as the chief form of international exchange in 1971...
...But if corporate autonomy worries bureaucrats, it has occasionally encouraged diplomats...
...What's more, the UN says, the top 187 multinationAl.q account for one-third of American manufacturing output...
...This suggests that a policy of compulsory deconcentration of concentrated industries . . . would be likely to reduce productive efficiency in those industries...
...A story in the T/mes of London (August 17) illustrates how multinational corporat-ions can bargain--and countervail...
...In theory and song, if only occasionally in practice, multinationals wield decisive influence over host-country economic policies...
...A Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee has recommended that OPIC's operations be transferred to private insurers to reduce the likelihood of governmental meddling on behalf of American corporations...
...in 1970...
...he was president of the American Political Science Association in 1961-62, and he is the author of several books, including The Supreme Court o n T r i a l (1963), and Popular Government i n America (1968) . . _9 Harold Mort is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Alabama . . . Stephen Rosen is a student in government at Harvard University . . . Peter Rusthoven is studying at Harvard Law School . . . C. Bascom Slemp is the chief Washington correspondent of The A l t e r n a t i v e . . . Benjamin Stein is a free-lance writer residing in Washington, D.C . . . . Judy Tyrrell is a graduate student in English and French literature at Indiana University . . . George Will is the Washington correspondent to N a t i o n a l Review and a rising television personality . . . impractical, "X" can dodge taxes by transferring its earnings to a less heavily taxed corporate branch...
...Sampson writes of ITr's need to convince governments that Washington stands behind it at the bargaining table...
...According to an analysis by Stephen Hymer and Robert Hawthorn, mere size seems not to have guaranteed the growth of multinationais between 1957 and 1967...
...If that is Contributors David Brudnoy is a visiting professor of history at the University of Rhode Island, a commentator with WNAC-TV (CBS) and WBGH-TV (PBS) in Boston, a free-lance writer and lecturer, and an associate of The A l t e r n a t i v e . . . Lindley H. Clark Jr...
...That is, when a few firms control or dominate one market...
...Harold Demsetz and Yale Brezen have challenged a warhorse of American antitrust doctrine, the idea that market concentration presents a reliable index of monopoly power...
...Stories abound, he wrote, of Geneen putting off the Shah or snubbing the King of the Belgians...
...But the subject is by no means closed...
...What do governments know about making jobs...
Vol. 7 • January 1974 • No. 4
