ABSTRACT
Together with multinational enterprises (MNEs), cartels played a key role in the global flow of technologies during most of the twentieth century. Indeed, technology appears as a key component of cartels, whose traditional functions include regulating innovation and the spread of technologies. Even though technology transfers are more often examined in conjunction with MNEs than cartels, 1 the latter play an essential role in many industrial sectors (e.g., chemicals, electrical appliances, textiles and telecommunications), where they control the spread and transfer of technologies to other countries by strictly regulating foreign direct investment (FDI) and manufacturing under licence. The goal is to maintain on the world market the competitive edge conferred by the mastery of technologies. 2 At the national level, cartels are also instrumental in regulating technology, in particular through the adoption of measures governing production (methods, quotas, R&D, etc.). However, the question of technology transfer usually does not arise in cartels organized at the national level, because a single national industry rarely enjoys a technological advantage on the world market that it seeks to maintain through cartel agreements aimed at limiting or even preventing the transfer of technology to other nations. One of the rare examples is that of British industry in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. At the time, the English authorities sought to prevent the transfer of technology to other countries by prohibiting craftsmen from emigrating and banning machine exports. 3 In the twentieth century, the creation of I. G. Farben in 1924 can also be seen as a way for German chemical manufacturers to use concentration within an industry, a policy that favours exports of finished goods rather than FDI. 4
