Acta Oeconomica 23. (1979)

1979 / 1-2. szám - Kádár Béla: Structural Changes in the International Capital Exports

В. KÁDÁR: CHANGES IN INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL EXPORTS 85 extracting industry was in the range of 80 per cent. Japan made 8 per cent of its African investments in the manufacturing industry and 52 per cent in the extracting industry. The special features of capital imports by countries on the lowest level of development are, however, characteristic of an ever narrowing sector of the international capital flows. Today only about 5 per cent of foreign investments are made in such backward countries where the old sectoral orientation of capital exports toward extracting industries has been sustained. The sectoral features of capital exports have thus revealed that correlations between levels of development and the stmcture of the international flow of capital are very loose, not significant, and not suitable for qualification. In broader contexts the sectoral pattern of the flow of capital is affected not by levels of development but by symptoms related to the sphere of economic power (development strategy, global strategy types, manoeuvring ability, and by the relative sectoral competitivity of the respective countries). Changing functions of capital export The review of capital exports by countries and sectors gives some starting points for an analysis of shifts in emphasis having taken place in the functions of capital exports. It will not be without interest to study how much capital exports are characteristic of the basic economic processes of contemporary capitalism, whether its functions and importance have narrowed or expanded, whether it is dynamically growing or decreasing. During the discussion in the Hungarian economic literature in 1966 and 1967, relying on an analysis of the world economic realities of the two decades after World War II, Ferenc Molnár said in an article introducing the discussion that “the general importance of capital export in present-day capitalism is smaller and different from what it was 50 or 60, or even 10 or 15 years ago.” In the period of the extensive growth of capitalist world economy and world trade, especially during the quarter of a century before World War II, capital export was a characteristic and general symptom of the countries with already developed economies, and — as it then seemed — it was playing a dynamically growing role in draining the surplus capitals and commodities, in improving the terms of capital realization, in the generation of the growth of national incomes. It obtained economic-historical peak importance in Britain where the receipts from capital investments represented at that time 10 per cent of the national product, two-fifth of exports, about half of the gross domestic formation, where the export of new capitals amounted to 4 to 7 per cent of tire national product, and which resulted in what is a typical picture of a parasitic national economy. [5] The proportions were remarkable though not like the above in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany, moreover, the capital exports influenced the development of capital importing countries such as Italy, Austria-Hungary, Japan, Russia, etc. Does it hold that capital export is of similar or increasing importance in contemporary capitalism, is that economy invariably parasitical? Let us have a look at the aggregate indicators: Acta Oeconomica 23, 1979

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