The Long-Term Impact of Foreign Multinational Enterprises in Spain: New Insights into an Old Topic

The role of foreign capital and technology in the economic and social progress of late-developing countries remains a controversial issue in both academic and policy circles. In this essay, we examine the case of Spain in the light of the academic literature from the 1960s to the present. First, we identify and contextualize the intellectual concerns and controversies of two important generations of economists and historians and their approaches to the specific issue of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We then discuss what we consider to be the seven major contributions of recent Spanish scholarship in terms of: 1/ new quantitative evidence on FDI inward flows and firm demography analyses of foreign MNEs; 2/ new approaches to the transfer of technology by MNEs; 3/ collective and individual case studies of foreign MNEs, with a focus on their impact on local capabilities; 4/ identification of patterns of investment by MNE home countries; 5/ identification and study of the local actors of inward FDI; 6/ new perspectives gained from the history of international relations; and 7) new evidence on processes leading from inward FDI to outward FDI. We argue that the time is ripe for comprehensive re-assessments of the long-term impact of foreign MNEs and the role of Spain in the global economy.