Does Growing Globalisation and Liberalisation of National Markets Indicate that Local Firms and Organisations will have a Greater Presence in International Markets and Louder Voices on International Bodies?

Abstract

This essay will consider the impact of liberalisation and globalisation on the firm through the lens of property rights and transaction costs. It will first establish the framework for the relationship between the planes on which a firm might be able to own and transact; the domestic, the international and the cosmopolitan. Using a bottom-up approach to emphasize the extension or the encroachment of the previous plane on the other, the essay will begin its analysis on the domestic plane and it will establish the firm as a creature of the domestic and elaborate on some of the primary motivations behind countries adopting more liberalised economic policy and the tension behind these motivations caused by the imposition of such policies on the firm. Moving to the international, it will elaborate on the interaction of domestic and international facilitated by economic policy frameworks and trade agreements and finally, on to the cosmopolitan, an envisioned space with no defined territorial boundaries, typified by conundrum the global commons pose to the understanding of property rights and transaction costs. The transition from one plane to another will emphasize the ballooning impact of transaction costs, profits, which determine the fate of firms and its relationship to property rights in determining the level and type of governance that is interfering within this expectation of profit and will confirm the need for caution in responding to the question.