Table Of ContentINTRA-FIRM TRADE AND THE DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES
By the same author
PEASANT AGRICULTURE, GOVERNMENT AND
ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA
INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
AGRICULTURAL PLANNING IN EAST AFRICA
(editor)
A WORLD DIVIDED, THE LESS-DEVELOPED
COUNTRIES IN THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY
(editor)
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC DISORDER: ESSAYS
IN NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS
INTRA-FIRM TRADE
AND THE DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES
Gerald K. Helleiner
M
MACMILLAN
PRESS
© Gerald K. Helleiner 1981
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1981 978-0-333-27739-3
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First edition 1981
Reprinted 1986
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Helleiner, Gerald Karl
Intra-firm trade and the developing countries
I. International business enterprises
- Addresses, essays, lectures
I. Title
382 HD2755.5
ISBN 978-1-349-05080-2 ISBN 978-1-349-05078-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05078-9
Contents
List of Tables vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgments x
l The Importance of Intra-Firm Trade l
2 Intra-Firm Trade and the Developing Countries: the
Data 14
3 US Intra-Firm Imports: Further Analysis of Related-
Party Trade 44
4 Intra-Firm Trade, Structural Adjustment and Trade
Policy 64
5 Transnational Corporations, Intra-Firm Trade and
the New Political Economy of US Trade Policy 73
6 Further Directions for Research on Intra-Firm Trade 90
Notes 95
References 99
Index 107
v
List of Tables
2.1 Majority-Owned Affiliate Sales to the United States
as Percentage of Total US Merchandise Imports by
Area of Origin, 1966-75 19
2.2 US Related-Party Imports as Percentage of Total
Imports, by Product Class and Origin, 1977 28
2.3 US Related-Party Imports as Percentage of Total
Imports, by Category, from Third World and OECD
Sources, 1977 30
2.4 Estimated Composition of US Related-Party
Imports, by US and non-US Parent Firms, 1974 33
2.5 US Imports under Tariff Items 807·00 and 806·30,
1966-78 (US$ millions) 36
2.6 US Imports under Item 807·00 from Specified Less
Developed Countries, by Schedule Total, 1976 (US$
thousands) 38
3.1 US Imports of Primary Commodities from Related
Parties in Less-Developed and Other Countries, 1975 50
3.2 US Related-Party Imports as Percentage of Total
Imports, by SITC Category and Area of Origin, 1977 57
3.3 Correlation Matrix for Independent Variables in
Regression Equations 60
3.4 Determinants of US Related-Party Imports as a
Percentage of US Imports, by Industry: Regression
Results 61
4.1 US Related-Party Imports as a Percentage of Total
Imports of Selected Manufactured Products from
Selected Newly Industrialising Countries, 1977 70
5.1 Intra-Firm Trade and the Structure of US Protection 85
vi
Preface
During the course of the last several years I have written a
series of papers on the role of transnational corporations in
developing country trade. My original intention was to
incorporate them all into one book which would span a rather
wide area, including such issues as technology trade, employ
ment and income distributional effects, and suggestions for
developing country policies. One part of my research in this
general area seemed so important and so self-contained,
however, that I have finally decided to focus here on this one
alone. Intra-firm trade is so understudied and so little in
corporated in most conventional discussions of international
trade that there seemed a special responsibility to try to gather
together what information there was and to put it in one place.
I dare to hope that by so doing I may stimulate others to launch
badly needed research in this field; at least, I hope to succeed in
making it a little easier for them. Research on intra-firm trade is
required everywhere and not just with reference to developing
country trade; but it was with the problems of developing
countries that I began, and it is primarily with them that I have
remained. Let others develop the implications of the pheno
menon for the industrialised world.
I am most grateful to the original publishers of the papers in
question for allowing me to use the material again in this book.
The original papers and their locations are listed on page ix. I
am also most grateful to all of those who have offered
comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of these papers.
These include, at various times and places, Max Corden, John
Dunning, Rita Cruise O'Brien, Carlos Diaz-Aiejandro,
Reginald Green, Charles Kindleberger, Lawrence Krause,
vii
viii
PREFACE
Paul Krugman, Sanjaya Lall, Stephen Magee, Alfred Maizels,
John Martin, Robin Murray, James Riedel, Hans Singer, and
Paul Streeten. Other participants in conferences and seminars
at which these papers were presented have also helped me to
improve their contents, notably those at the Institute of
Development Studies, Sussex, conferences on 'New
Approaches Toward Trade' in September 1975, and on 'Intra
firm Transactions and their Impact on Trade and
Development' (co-sponsored by the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development) in November 1977; at
the twenty-fifth anniversary conference of the Institute of
Social Studies, The Hague, December 1977; at the conference
on 'Intra-industry Trade' at the Institut fiir Weltwirtschaft,
Kiel, in December 1978; and seminars at the Science Policy
Research Unit, University of Sussex; Queen Elizabeth House,
Oxford; the Overseas Development Council, Washington; and
Williams College, Mass. I am the beneficiary not only of the
suggestions of those who can be identified by name but also of
those of anonymous reviewers and editors of the journals in
which the papers first appeared. I should like to single out for
special thanks Real Lavergne who provided invaluable re
search assistance for Chapters 2 and 3, and is a co-author of
one of the papers on which this book draws. His own
independent research promises to throw important further
light on intra-firm trading practices. For computational assis
tance with the first part of Chapter 3, I am also grateful to Allan
Gregory, David Tomczak, and John Sculler, and for assistance
with Chapter 5 to J. Peter Jarrett.
The material presented in this volume has all been published
elsewhere but not exactly in the form in which it appears here.
While I have made little attempt to alter the original content by
updating statistics, adding further references, and the like, I
have substantially edited and reordered it all in order to reduce
the degree of repetition which would otherwise have appeared,
to remove weaker or extraneous material. and to improve the
flow from one section to another.
Support for the research which underlies this book has been
PREFACE IX
offered by the Canada Council, the International Development
Research Centre (Ottawa), and most recently, by the new
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
through its Leave Fellowship programme. Continuing sup
port, including the sabbatical leave which permitted the book's
completion, has also been provided from my home base, the
University of Toronto. The Institute of Development Studies,
Sussex (in the person of Richard Jolly, its Director) kindly
provided me with a Visiting Fellowship in the summer of 1975,
during which Chapter 5 was originally drafted. During the first
half of 1979 I was also kindly offered an office and supporting
services at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford (by its Warden,
Keith Griffin), and the Graduate Institute of International
Studies, University of Geneva (through the assistance of
Henryk Kierzkowski). I am most grateful to all of these for
their invaluable assistance.
Despite my heavy debts to so many institutions and people,
the responsibility for the contents of this volume rest ex
clusively upon my own shoulders. I hope that some of those
who have assisted in my enterprise will nevertheless take some
pleasure in the final product.
Toronto, August 1979 G.K.H.
