A long tradition in international economics explains comparative advantage by differences between countries in their stage of development, or their endowments of land, labor, and capital, and suggests that universal development will reduce the importance of trade. Sweden and the United States...

The share of U.S. multinational firms in world exports of manufactures has remained almost constant at about 17 per cent for the last 20 years while that of the U.S. as a country has declined substantially. The composition of world manufactured exports shifted toward high-technology or...

Direct investment in foreign countries by U.S. goods industries represents a response to differences in labor costs to a much greater extent than the more rapidly growing investment by service industries. The latter seem to be less able to allocate different types of production to different...

Overseas production in a country by affiliates of Swedish and U.S. firms rarely appears to displace exports from the two home countries and in most cases either has no effect or tends to increase home country exports. The positive effect on Swedish exports is evident not only with respect to...

The participation of U.S. service industry firms in Latin American markets for services consists mainly of the activities of U.S.-owned affiliates operating in Latin America and very little of direct exports of ser- vices from the U.S. The important policy issues thus involve barriers to the...

The international investment account of the United States has gone through several cycles. Before World War I, the U.S. was a borrower most of the time and an international debtor. Between the two World Wars, it was first a lender and then a refuge for foreign capital. After World War 11, the...

While the U.S. and Sweden both lost more than 20 per cent of their shares of world and developed countries' exports of manufactures over the 15 years or so after the mid-1960's, the export shares of their multinational firms stayed fairly stable or even increased. The multinationals, while first...

The share in world exports of manufactured goods of U.S. multinational firms, including their majority-owned overseas affiliates, has been nearly stable since 1966. This stability, over a period in which the export share of the U.S. as a geographical entity was declining for the most part,...

This paper distinguishes between the competitive position of U.S. firms and that of the U.S. and other countries as geographical locations for production. While the share of the U.S. in world exports of manufactures fellmore than 40 per cent between 1957 and 1977, the share of all U.S. firms...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relations among characteristics of U.S. firms, their tendency to invest abroad, and their choice of production locations. The larger the firm, and the higher its profitability, capital intensity, technological Intensity, and the skill level ofits labor...