European and Italian multinationals: vices and virtues since the 1980s

The paper examines the distribution of European multinational corporations by sector and country and the trends in the period 1989-2004. A fulcrum of the analysis is the comparison drawn between organizational advances and the development of financial capital, studied against the background of the growth in corporate size, the globalization of factories and markets, and the divergence between the rise in productivity and the fall in labour's share of value added. The consequences in terms of innovation are positive, but the new globalized organization has helped to generate an endemic excess of cash-flows and less-than-virtuous conduct. Borrowing in the market by means of bond issues has partly replaced the use of bank credit; this is positive, provided effective oversight and guidance systems are put in place in timely fashion. Large multinationals are oligopolistic and naturally restrictive of competition and thus are socially acceptable only if they generate ongoing technical progress that is transferred to the whole system