Law, Technology, and Development: Policy Debates in the New Millennium

Abstract

The growth of multinationals and foreign direct investment in the past twenty-five years has increased our understanding of interdependencies among developed and developing economies. The impact of foreign direct investment in developing countries is analyzed by studying technology transfer, trade linkages, the flow and regulation of capital and finance, organizational changes and employment shifts. In recent years, researchers have shown that the flow of investment from developed to developing countries is undertaken in search of lower input costs as well as in search of new knowledge. Debates over the positive versus negative effects of the spread of multinationals and globalization in both source and destination economies have been politicized in national elections. Many factors have influenced the processes that led to the expansion of multinational companies across the world. Law and regulation facilitated the spread on one hand, and again new laws and regulations came about to control the activities of multinationals and nation states as well. This special issue is a collection of papers that range from specific debates on how technology transfer should be accommodated between developed and developing countries (Davis 2005), to what sort of technology must be developed to address the real needs of development (Archibugi & Bizzarri 2005). Within this broad spectrum, the following topics are addressed: an analysis of the relationship between foreign ownership and export performance in India to show the importance of strategic control in positioning Indian firms in the global production network (Chhibber & Majumdar 2005); the importance of real property ownership in globalization (Malloy 2005); the evolving politics among the U.S., EU and tax havens in taxing the profits of multinational corporations and ultimately the location of their subsidiaries. These papers are followed by three specific studies on regulating science and technology in a globalizing world. The first paper is on the evolving nature of patenting software and its implications (Graham &