Multinationals, Linkages, and Economic Development

This paper explores how multinationals affect underdeveloped regions through the generation of linkages. It is shown that the linkage effect of multinationals on the host country is more likely to be favorable when the good that multinationals produce uses intermediate goods intensively, when there are large costs of communication between the headquarters and the production plant, and when the home and host countries are not too different in terms of the variety of intermediate goods produced. If these conditions are reversed, then multinationals could even hurt the developing economy, formalizing the idea that multinationals may create enclave economies within developing countries. Copyright 1996 by American Economic Association.