CRITICAL DISCUSSION QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
课后练习参考答案
1. Describe the shifts in the world economy over the last 30 years. What are the implications of these shifts for international businesses based in Great Britain? North America? Hong Kong?
Answer:
The world economy has shifted dramatically over the past 30 years. As late as the 1960s, four stylized facts described the demographics of the global economy. The first was U.S. dominance in the world economy and world trade. The second was U.S. dominance in the world foreign direct investment picture. Related to this, the third fact was the dominance of large, multinational U.S. firms in the international business scene. The fourth was that roughly half of the globe - the centrally planned economies of the Communist world - was off-limits to Western international businesses. All of these demographic facts have changed. Although the U.S. remains the world's dominant economic power, its share of world output and world exports have declined significantly since the 1960s. This trend does not reflect trouble in the U.S. economy, but rather reflects the growing industrialization of developing countries such as China, India, Indonesia, and South Korea. This trend is also reflected in the world foreign direct investment picture. As depicted in Figure 1.2 in the textbook, the share of world output (or the stock of foreign direct investment) generated by developing countries has been on a steady increase since the 1960s, while the share of world output generated by rich industrial countries has been on a steady decline. Shifts in the world economy can also be seen through the shifting power of multinational enterprises. Since the 1960s, there have been two notable trends in the demographics of the multinational enterprise. The first has been the rise of non-U.S. multinationals, particularly Japanese multinationals.