Acta Oeconomica 23. (1979)
1979 / 1-2. szám - Kádár Béla: Structural Changes in the International Capital Exports
В. KÁDÁR: CHANGES IN INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL EXPORTS 77 developed market economy countries that provided then about 97 per cent of the volume of international foreign capital investments had a stock worth 128 billion dollars and within it the share of the USA was 61 per cent, that of Britain 15 per cent, of the FRG 5 per cent, of France 4 per cent and of Canada and Japan 3 per cent each. [2] Although the bulk of the surplus capital accming to crude oil producing countries following the oil price explosion in 1973 was deposited with American banks, their smaller direct investments (mainly in the form of buying completely or partially already existing companies) also added to the sources of capital exports. (Table 1) It is a tangible illustration for the accelerating expansion of capital exports that the volume of foreign capital investments by the four leading capital exporters increased from 18 billion dollars to 42 billion dollars between 1950 and 1960 and amounted to as much as 102 billion dollars in 1970 and to nearly 220 billion dollars in 1976. The most significant change on the export side of the pattem of capital investments by countries is the decrease of the USA ’s weight below 50 per cent. There is an obvious connection between the latter and the downward trend of the dollar as from the 1970s, as well as the nationalizations carried out in the developing world (Venezuela, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mexico, etc.) which reduced the American investments particularly in the cmde oil sector and in other extracting branches. Over and above the direct incentives and barriers, capital exports also show the implications deriving from the general world economic positions and strategies of the various countries. During the quarter of a century after World War II the USA’s intention was to use her technical, economic and strategic superiority accumulated in the 1940s and deriving from the internationally unique size of her economy, for a lasting consolidation of her international controlling role. In the economic sphere she pursued this objective by stepped-up exports not of commodities but of capital that would provide control over the raw material resources on the one hand, and over those branches of industry on the other hand which were essential for technological development requiring the most of R&D and which mostly showed a concentration of power (e. g. petrochemistry and production of transport equipments). Utilization through foreign trade of the American comparative advantages asserting themselves in the technological sphere was impeded up to the middle of the past decade by the balance of payments problems of the other developed market economy countries and by the lower wage level of the West European qualified workers. Thus, as regards the USA, for nearly a quarter of a century, the process of internationalization of the forces of production got encouragement primarily from the side of foreign capital expansion. The devaluation of the dollar, the faster rising cost levels of the other OECD countries and the actual disappearance of the earlier gap between the wage levels of American and West European labour created by the middle of the seventies new conditions for American foreign trade expansion and, unlike the case during the last quarter of a century, the role of exports as its carrier became far more important. In Britain, a capital exporter for over two centuries in the economic history of the world, capital export was traditionally the instrument of commodity sales. But capital export gradually lost its export stimulating power in connection with the general lagging Acta Oeconomica 23, 1979