Foreign Entrepreneurs Research Articles

Guinea and the Ivory Coast– Contrasts in Economic Development

Guinea and the Ivory Coast are neighbouring, former French colonies in West Africa. Both gained their independence about the same time – Guinea in 1958 and the Ivory Coast in 1960. The contrast in the subsequent economic performance of these two countries with closely corresponding resource endowments is remarkable. The Ivory Coast's gross domestic product has grown at an annual rate of about 8 per cent in real terms. The Guinean economy has stagnated. A review of the economic record of both since independence suggests that three factors were mainly responsible for their strikingly unequal performance: (1) differences in governmental philosophies of mobilisation and organisation of resources; (2) differences in the extent to which foreign markets shaped domestic economic expansion; and (3) differences in the role of foreign entrepreneurs in the national development effort.

Reviews

Bertell Oilman, Alienation. London, CUP, 1971. (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics.) xvi + 325 pp. £4.00. Paul Craig Roberts, Alienation and the Soviet Economy. Towards a General Theory of Marxian Alienation, Organizational Principles and the Soviet Economy. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1971. viii + 121 pp. $6.00. Raymond Hutchings, Seasonal Influences in Soviet Industry. London, OUP, 1971 (for the Royal Institute of International Affairs), xiii + 321 pp. £4.00. Paul Gregory, Socialist and Nonsocialist Industrialization Patterns. London, Praeger, 1970. xxvi + 209 pp. £6.25. John P. McKay, Pioneers for Profit. Foreign Entrepreneur ship and Russian Industrialization 1883–1913. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1970. xiii + 442 pp. 104s. Kazimierz Grzybowski, Soviet Public International Law, Doctrines and Diplomatic Practice. Leyden, A. W. Sijthoff, 1970. xx + 544 pp. Shumpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo‐Japanese War. New York and London, Columbia UP, 1970. x + 358 pp. $12.00. £5.40. Robert Legvold, Soviet Policy in West Africa. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard UP, 1970, and London, OUP, 1971. xii + 372 pp. £6.25.

Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach

Since the turn of the twentieth century, legislation in Western countries has expanded rapidly to reverse the brief dominance of laissez faire during the nineteenth century. The state no longer merely protects against violations of person and property through murder, rape, or burglary but also restricts ‘discrimination’ against certain minorities, collusive business arrangements, ‘jaywalking’, travel, the materials used in construction, and thousands of other activities. The activities restricted not only are numerous but also range widely, affecting persons in very different pursuits and of diverse social backgrounds, education levels, ages, races, etc. Moreover, the likelihood that an offender will be discovered and convicted and the nature and extent of punishments differ greatly from person to person and activity to activity. Yet, in spite of such diversity, some common properties are shared by practically all legislation, and these properties form the subject matter of this essay.

John Cockerill in Southern Russia, 1885-1905: A Study of Aggressive Foreign Entrepreneurship

A case study of two ventures undertaken by a Belgian company in Russia focuses upon several of the major problems experienced by foreign entrepreneurs under the Czars at the turn of the century.

Continuity in Economic Activity and Policy during the Post-Petrine Period in Russia

To discuss economic activity in Russia of the eighteenth century is to deal with an economic and social order that antedates the age of industrialization. Industrial activity in Russia during the eighteenth century was carried on within the political framework of an autocratic state, with ill-defined norms of legal behavior, and against the background of a serf agriculture which reached its apogee during this very period. The state of the industrial arts was low in comparison with western European standards, and the use of waterpower as a motive force in manufactories was introduced in Russia by foreign entrepreneurs only in the seventeenth century. Against this background, the efforts by Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725) to modernize Russia appear genuinely heroic. The demands of his policy forced the government to engage directly in a vast program of establishing new industries, of converting small handicraft workshops into large-scale manufactories, and of encouraging private entrepreneurs to follow the government's example.

The Luddite Movement in France

URING the reign of Louis XIV, Colbert sent spies abroad to bring back new industrial techniques, sponsored the experiments of inventors in special laboratories, enticed foreign entrepreneurs with concessions, and attracted skilled foreign workers with special privileges.' In the eighteenth century, although the government manifested much less enthusiam in the pursuit of this policy, it was not completely abandoned. As England was undergoing its industrial revolution, a few models of the new machines found their way across the Channel in spite of prohibitions and embargoes. And in the last years of the ancien rEgime an ambitious group of manufacturers in Rouen, the Abbe Baudeau's Free Society for the Encouragement of Inventions Which Tend to Perfect Arts and Trades, in Imitation of the London Society (1776), and government agencies working under Calonne made a concerted effort to further the introduction of machines.2 Since this mechanization was limited, machine-breaking was not a serious problem in eighteenth-century France.3 The workers received each new loom with a complaint that it deprived them of work, disrupted the organization of the existing industrial system, and caused a marked deterioration in the quality of the finished product. Except for chance outbursts, such as