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Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2012

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Summary

Economic historians may well look back on the last quarter of the twentieth century as marking the decline of the pattern of world trade and industrial production that had been the hallmark of the two previous centuries – the international division of labor under which a small number of core manufacturing countries accounted for an overwhelming percentage of global industrial production and a large number of periphery or developing countries provided raw materials and simple primary products to feed the industrial economies. This transition has been set in motion by a number of interactive forces, including

the ascendence of increasingly stateless multinational corporations bent on maximizing profits and minimizing production costs through the integration of global production units,

the internationalization of investment capital and financial markets,

the emergence of a new wave of rapidly industrializing nations in the periphery, and

the evolution toward “postindustrial” economies that has commenced in the United States, Japan, and a few countries of Europe.

In the midst of these forces – trying to shape, cope with, and stave off their impacts – stand the nearly two hundred individual nation-states that constitute the postcolonial political world. In general, the industrialized nations are trying to keep up the pace of innovation necessary to remain competitive in highly technological industries and at the same time to hold onto a critical mass of low-technology industries to maintain current levels of employment.

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Chapter
Information
Pollution and the Struggle for the World Product
Multinational Corporations, Environment, and International Comparative Advantage
, pp. ix - xii
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1988

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  • Preface
  • H. Jeffrey Leonard
  • Book: Pollution and the Struggle for the World Product
  • Online publication: 05 January 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511895487.001
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  • Preface
  • H. Jeffrey Leonard
  • Book: Pollution and the Struggle for the World Product
  • Online publication: 05 January 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511895487.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • H. Jeffrey Leonard
  • Book: Pollution and the Struggle for the World Product
  • Online publication: 05 January 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511895487.001
Available formats
×