Transformation of the Role of Multinational Corporations in the Global Economy and Shifts in the Geography of Foreign Direct Investment

The article presents the results of a study of long-term trends in the development of transnational business and its geography, covering the second half of the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. A comprehensive assessment of changes in the role of transnational corporations (TNCs) in the world economy, shifts in their localization, in the spatial and sectoral structure of foreign production is carried out based on data on accumulated incoming and outgoing foreign direct investment. The main research methods are historical-geographical and systematic approaches that considering global relationships and analyze the processes of internationalization of production in the context of the evolution of the world economic system. It is shown that international production of TNCs originated in the middle of the 19th century, and it developed in two large waves, separated by a deep recession and prolonged recovery growth. In its evolution, four stages have been identified, lasting from 20–30 to ~60 years. It is established that the most radical transformations in the geography of foreign direct investment (FDI) occurred, firstly, in the middle of the 20th century in the conditions of a deep crisis of the global transnational business, and secondly, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries during its dynamic growth. The relationship between the rise and decline of the great powers, the collapse of colonial empires, and the transition of Western countries to mature industrialization, on the one hand, and the restructuring of the territorial and production structure of the transnational business, on the other, is revealed. It is shown that the main shifts in the geography of international production are associated with changes in the ratio of economically developed and developing countries in the structure of incoming and outgoing FDI. The fundamental transformation of the role of transnational business in the world economy, according to the author, occurred in the 1980s, when foreign direct investment and international production of TNCs became the main form of internationalization of the economy

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