Public policy and the multinational corporation

Abstract

How are multinational corporations (MNCs) likely to respond to different public policy worlds? In particular, how are MNCs based in the United States likely to respond to a restrictive world in which the United States, the EEC, and Japan actively discourage multinational business, and, alternatively, a supportive world in which these three countries actively encourage multinational business? Given the response patterns of the MNCs, what can we say about the effect of alternative public policies on these businesses? In an effort to answer these and other questions, the Multinational Enterprise Unit of The Wharton School has adopted a futureoriented, prospective research design in its Multinational Enterprise-Public Policy Study (MEPP). A fundamental purpose of MEPP is to provide public policy makers with information on the anticipated responses of MNCs to alternative public policy worlds and on the implications of these responses for the direction public policy should take. In short, MEPP seeks to generate a systematic advance feedback on the probable consequences of a given policy environment that may be contemplated by public policy makers but has not yet come into existence.