When I finished the book Third World Multinationals: The Rise of Foreign Investment from Developing Countries in 1982, I said that I was finished with the subject. I had described a number of multinationals, proposed some explanations for the phenomenon, provided a little evidence, and hoped that others would pick up on the ideas and do more systematic research. I refused to participate in subsequent conferences on the subject and would not write any more on the topic. With perhaps two very minor exceptions, I have stuck by this commitment for the past twenty-five years.

Nevertheless, the organizers of this conference convinced me to return to the subject. After twenty-five years, it seems like a good time to reflect on early work, to ask which ideas now seem dated, or even wrong, and which might still be relevant. More important is the question of whether more recent Third World Multinational Corporations (TWMNCs) present us with questions that were not addressed in the early research, and whether past research offers broader lessons for today's researchers.

Underlying arguments of earlier work

The books by Sanjaya Lall and myself were not the first pieces of research on the subject of FDI from the developing countries. Ram Gopal Agarwal, Eduardo White, Antonio Casas-Gonzalez, Marcelo Diamand, Carlos Diaz-Alejandro, Carl W. Dundas, and a few others did work in the area in the earlier part of the 1970s.