ABSTRACT
As a part of the globalization of economic activity, the cross-border transactions of technology and direct investments have expanded greatly over the past two decades, especially since the mid-1980s. Several global economic events of a reinforcing nature have contributed to this expansion. These trends include: worldwide liberalization of national economies to trade and investments; privatization; regional economic integration in many geographic regionsespecially in the EU and North America and the corporate restructuring sparked off by them; the emergence of new generic or core technologies; reforms in the Central and Eastern European countries; appreciation of the yen since the Plaza Accord; and rapid technological learning and industrialization in the East Asian countries, among others. The annual magnitude of FDI flows has risen from about $25 billion in the early 1970s to nearly $350 billions in 1996, and that of annual flows of technology transfers in terms of international technological payments from $7-8 billion to over $60 billion over the same period. This expansion in cross-border activities of enterprises has been accompanied by much restructuring of the global pattern of production, and hence, technology, trade and investment-where some countries have gained at the cost of others. The extent of the restructuring or ‘reconfiguration’ as Dunning puts it, over a short period of two decades is probably more profound than the changes taking place over the past two centuries.
