rate of return on capital

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Apr 18 12:16:17 PDT 2002


Charles Brown wrote:


>Why is it the the U.S. direct investment in those other developed
>countries is able to make more profit than the capital that those
>countries send away to the U.S. ? Why is the direct investment from
>the other developed countries in the U.S. able to make more profit
>in the U.S. than the capital that the U.S. invests in other
>countries ( because it no longer makes enough profit in the U.S. ) ?

Generally, U.S. assets abroad are more profitable than foreign assets in the U.S. There are several reasons - low wages here (which is why all the foreign automakers love Alabama), and the fact that FDI in the U.S. is more recent than U.S. FDI abroad, meaning that U.S.-based MNCs paid more reasonable prices for their assets. The extreme example of this is all the high-priced stuff that Japanese firms bought in the 1980s.

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list