Transnational Corporations-Roles and Impacts in Global Economy - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages The transnational corporations have large revenues and can exercise more power than the individual states across which they operate. The companies ‘command enormous financial resources possess vast technical resources, and they have extensive global reach’ (CSIDS, n.d, p.1). It has been noted that the combined revenue of General Motors and Ford is larger than the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ward, 2003). Comparable statistics and facts apply to other giant automobile corporations in the world and the individual economy of certain countries. It then beats logic in the kind of influence that these transnational corporations can have on the regional and global economy. As such, transnational corporations have significant market power (Ietto-Gillies, 2012). They play significant roles and they have negative and positive impacts on the local, regional, and global development issues. This paper focuses on the roles that the TNCs play in shaping the global economy and the significant impacts that have been observed from the move to go global. The domination of these large corporations in a different sector of the world economy is illustrated. The impacts of the TNC Significant developments have been recorded in the foreign direct investments by the transnational corporations since the 1980s with the TNCs taking different forms (Lundan, 2011, p.640). Significant increases have also been observed in the worth of the FDIs. For instance, the total global foreign direct investment in 2002 amounted to about $651bn (CSIDS, n.d). The developed nations are the major home countries for the foreign direct investors and the countries receive much of the proceeds from the investments. ...Download file to see next pages Read More