ABSTRACT
In the 1970s and early 1980s it became fashionable to search for general theories of international production which encompassed all the contributions of earlier writers thought to be significant. These were sometimes advanced as general theories of the multinational corporation (MNC), the main institutional agent of international production, or general theories of foreign direct investment (FDI), the major means by which international production is financed.1 When confronted with evidence on certain types of international production that their ‘general’ theories did not seem to explain, the proponents of such theories all too frequently seemed to respond either by dismissing the relevance of the evidence or by adapting their terminology to accommodate it. To the extent they succeeded their theories became increasingly cumbersome and less operational (as discussed by Buckley, 1983).
