Multinational Enterprises: Transfer Partners and Transfer Policies

Asserting that technology transfer is of vital necessity to multi­ national enterprises (MNEs) sounds by no means original. But whereas much attention has been paid so far to the technology transfer from the MNEs outwards, a look at the Bibliography to this volume will confirm that relatively little exists on transfers inwards to the MNEs or on the global structure of their transfers. Using original data from a study on the patenting activities of MNEs, ¹ this article aims to give some new statistical information on the structure of transfer to the various group of partners. It also provides some insights as to the relative importance of internal and external partners.