Here’s my review — appearing in The Independent Review — of Nathan Jensen’s useful book, Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation.
Nation-States and Foreign Direct Investment
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This sounds like a parallel, if more narrow focused, work to The Central Liberal Truth by Lawrence E. Harrison. Jensen's work focuses on the short term (read years) while Harrison suggests a much longer time frame (decades).
When he talks about institutions does Jensen get into the role played "relationship-based" government organizations as opposed to "rule-based" government orgs?
Wow. All so confusing. Modern liberal policies actually are favorable to FDI. Yet most modern liberal/progressive think that FDI are an aberration of Smith and Riccardos ideas of free trade and will result in a race to the bottom. My brain hurts….need more time to think….
Oh muirgeo… I'll play Barry Bonds to your Mike Bacsik. "not unfavorable" does not mean "favorable". Somewhere between favorable and unfavorable is neutral.
Boudreaux's review of Jensen's book underscores why we free trade proponents are not worried about a race to the bottom. Trade is not between nations, but between citizens (or firms) within those nations. International trade just (inconveniently) pairs trading partners is different political jurisdictions. Like all trade, international trade is based on trust. If you can't trust your trading partner, the arrangement gets pretty expensive and might not be worth doing. When the policies of a government make trading partners untrustworthy, what do you expect other than unwillingness of outsiders to trade or invest? I have no idea why this isn't obvious.
If nothing else it sounds like a good case for democratic pluralism and against both statism and laissez faire capitalism.
Yes, very confusing. I now have a glimpse of what I don't know I don't know.
- Richard