The growing disparity between the developed and the developing countries
has once again rekindled the debate about the relative merits of foreign
investment as means whereby the developed countries can help the devel-
oping countries in both achieving a reasonable rate of growth and also
from preventing the widening gap between the North and the South from
widening even further. This renewed interest in the debate was most
sharply highlighted at the recently concluded North-South economic
summit conference at Cancun, Mexico. There, the United States took the
position that massive increases in foreign aid were neither practical
nor the best means of ensuring continuing and satisfactory growth in the
developing countries. Rather the solution was to be found in depending
on a free market economy and on inflows of private foreign investment.
Behind these views, of course lie the more fundamental questions: for
example, what should be the role of multinational corporations in the
developing countries since they constitute the main source of foreign
private investment? Should there be greater cooperation between the
public sectors of the North and the South? What is the best means of
bridging the economic gap between the North and the South: through
direct transfers of wealth from the North to the South or through
raising South's growth rates via the transfer of technology and the
inflow of investment by multinationals? These questions are of
fundamental importance and have wide ranging implications, not only for
the economic
