Abstract
This chapter explores the determinants of growth of the 74 largest US MNCs in manufacturing industry during 1976–79. It seeks to make two contributions. First, drawing upon the ‘managerial’ model of firm growth, it extends empirical testing of this phenomenon beyond that of the previous investigations, which have confined themselves to examining the impact on growth of one variable, initial firm size. Second, it considers how multinationality may affect firm growth. The MNC literature, starting from rather different premises to the managerial school, seems to have taken for granted (despite dubious statistical support) that large firm size and geographical diversification both benefit growth; no attempt has, however, been made so far to relate multinationality explicitly to other influences on firm growth.
This paper was co-authored by N. S. Siddharthan. We are grateful to Donald Hay and the Editors of the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics for comments and discussions on an earlier draft, but retain responsibility for any errors that remain in this paper.
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© 1985 Sanjaya Lall
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Lall, S. (1985). The Recent Growth of the Largest US Multinationals. In: Multinationals, Technology and Exports. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17952-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17952-7_2
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