IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v44y2002i2p65-87.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Australian Firms Abroad before 1970: Why So Few, Why Those, and Why There?

Author

Listed:
  • D. Merrett

Abstract

This article draws on the FDI literature to theorise about the likelihood that firms based in a small, highly protectionist and commodity exporting economy located in the south-west Pacific might become multinationals before 1970. It is argued that the scale, structure and geographic isolation of the Australian economy mitigated against large outflows of FDI relative to domestic investments and to GDP. While this contention holds at the macro level, hundreds of firms from the resources, services and manufacturing sectors have been identified as being multinationals. For the most part, their overseas investments were peripheral adjuncts to domestic business. Moreover, the overwhelming bulk of investment was concentrated in countries immediately adjacent to Australia, particularly New Zealand.

Suggested Citation

  • D. Merrett, 2002. "Australian Firms Abroad before 1970: Why So Few, Why Those, and Why There?," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(2), pages 65-87.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:44:y:2002:i:2:p:65-87
    DOI: 10.1080/713999270
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713999270
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/713999270?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jock Given, 2017. "Born Global, Made Local: Multinational Enterprise and Australia's Early Wireless Industry," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(2), pages 158-193, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:44:y:2002:i:2:p:65-87. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.