When any resource-scarce country reaches a stage of growth where resource-intensive heavy industry becomes a leading growth sector (and lifestyles turn increasingly energyconsuming), it is compelled to seek out resources overseas by making investments in project-specific infrastructure (and even...

Just over a decade ago, the phenomenal economic growth of Japan was admired and even feared. It had pursued a successful strategy of industry upgrading to catch up with the West, maximizing bank-based, state-directed financing. Ironically, the very institutional setup that was required for...

The author argues that the proposed EFCA, if enacted, would decrease the attractiveness of the United States for FDI in the auto industry.

The authors explore the China-side determinants of China's industrial relocation to sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting several hurdles to substantial translocation that would jump start local economic development.

Economic development has recently been time-compressed due to an ever-accelerating cross-border dissemination of industrial knowledge, especially at the hands of MNEs. And a new "open-door" strategy of industrial catch-up has come to be adopted, as best exemplified by China's FDI-led take-off, a...

For the initial stage of catch-up growth, the "FDI-led takeoff" is an expedient alternative to the traditional infant-industry protection approach. Higher stages call for more nuanced, national-interests-dictated strategies to enhance domestic knowledge capability. A stages perspective cannot be...

Consumption-focused MNEs that have originated mostly since the end of World War II spread consumerism globally, prompting the Smithian goal of economic growth. Now that late industrializers have swiftly been catching up to join the ranks of advanced economies, these MNEs are eagerly setting up...

Recent political development in the advanced economies, particularly in the US, signals a fast-growing backlash to MNEs' job-offshoring as a response to high wages at home. How best to tackle the issue must be rethought.

The notion of ‘shared growth’ was introduced by the World Bank in recognition of East Asia’s rapid growth accompanied by poverty reduction. It emphasizes the criticality of pro-poor policies and institutional setups in the fast-developing East Asian economies. The efforts of these...