Multinational Corporations' Economic And Human Rights Impacts On Developing Countries: A Review And Research Agenda

eveloping countries are attracting a significant portion of global Foreign Direct Investments. Governments of such countries often compete fiercely for attracting Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in the expectation of the advantages they will bring to their economies, often prioritizing economic goals over fundamental human rights. For long, economists have analysed the economic impacts of MNCs, while a parallel strand of work in political science, business ethics and international law investigates the repercussions MNC operations on human rights. Despite the significant relatedness and complementarities, these two bodies of literature have so far poorly interacted. This paper addresses this limitation and systematically analyses and integrate existing micro-level empirical evidence on the economic and human rights impacts of MNCs on developing countries. It provides a critical analysis of what is known, and highlights what we do not know about the factors that mediate the positive and/or negative impacts of MNC operations on host developing countries. Based on the critical analysis of the literature, it discusses avenues for future research in this field and sets the grounds for a new inter-disciplinary research agenda on this subject. Key words: Multinational corporations, spillovers, human rights, developing countries.