ABSTRACT
Make the choice: if you were to start a firm, which national policy environment would you choose? The US in 2001, or the USSR in 1981? That is an obvious set-up but it illustrates that national environments matter. Exceptional firms – such as Cemex and Vitro – can transcend their national environment, or bypass it – like the Indian software industry. But all firms are constrained or facilitated by the policy environment. And for most firms, growing value-added is determined by the policy environment.
