ABSTRACT
Chapters 2-5 have considered external constraints imposed by public sector action. Foreign investment is not an external intervention of the same kind. But it has traditionally been asserted (the cliche that the output of company A is greater than the GDP of country B) that the economic and political power of large private firms removes trade from national control, and that this is an increasingly important influence on the nature of the international system. It is therefore relevant to look at the evidence for the importance of such organisations in trade, at any changes in this, and at differences between different types of countries or products. We must also ask how an international system in which multinational companies have a significant role would be different from a less oligopolistic one. A final section of this chapter examines how foreign investment has been changing and can be expected to change in the medium term.
