いわゆる「のれん代」からみた多国籍企業と世界経済の変容(現代株式資本の変容と病理,第54回大会共通論題)

抄録

The greenfield-type of foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational corporations (MNC) is different from the merger and acquisition (M&A) type FDI in that the latter incurs so-called 'goodwill' to the investor. Most researchers in accounting have understood 'goodwill' to be supernormal profits capitalized by the normal profit rate in the industry due to certain advantageous assets held by a specific company. It actually represents, however, negative 'promoter's profits': i.e., normal profit in the industry capitalized by the general interest rate. When a company is purchased in an M&A, its asset value as industrial capital is evaluated as equity capital; the discrepancy between them stands for 'goodwill'. This is the process in which industrial capital is transformed into industry-equity capital, although the Japanese accounting standards still requires 'goodwill' to be depreciated over years. As companies expand their scale via cross-border M&As and become multinational, they are inevitably compelled to maximize capital gains in order to compensate 'goodwill' which accumulates as fictitious intangible assets. The second half of the 1990s witnessed an unprecedented surge of cross-border M&As especially between US and EU countries. When we turn our attention to the historical development of the world economy, we find that the advanced capitalist countries commonly underwent a substantial transition in the early 1980s, in which their profit rates, after suffering from a tendency toward long-term decline, began to pick up again. Their profit rates, with the exception of Japan, gradually and steadily strengthened the rising tendency toward the period of the so-called 'Information Technology' bubble in the second half of the 1990s. We also find that foreign indirect investment of the world developed in three stages: i. e., bank loan in the 1970s, which led to the dramatic debt crisis of developing countries after 1982 onward; bond investment in the 1980s, which was strongly facilitated by the so-called 'twin deficit' of the US economy, being financed by a massive inflow of foreign capital into Treasury securities; and finally, equity investment after the middle of the 1990s. International surplus capital finally established its complete form in equity capital with the help of some historical events such as the 'Big Bang' in the UK in 1986 and the reunification of Germany in 1990. It has been globally circulating among advanced capitalist countries, developing countries, 'emerging markets', and 'economies in transition'. Therefore, the transformation of MNCs into industry-equity capital, which took place on a massive scale in the second half of the 1990s, was simultaneously accompanied by that of international surplus capital into equity investment; and their combination statistically manifested itself in the highly synchronized movement of FDI and equity investment in the same period. The double transformation seems to bring about possibly fatal diseases to the capitalist world economy. Firstly, in the sphere of an individual MNC, it appears as speculative pursuit of capital gains and as strong aversion to R&D and fixed capital investment. Secondly, in the sphere of a national economy, it takes the form of wasteful and unproductive consumption of realized capital gains, which results in the deterioration of the nation's current account. Lastly, in the sphere of the world economy as a whole, it inevitably creates instability in the international capital markets. MNCs are most likely to transfer their capital as frequently as necessary for the sake of securing their capital value, if not for speculation. The interaction between unstable FDI and speculative equity investment would be one of the most serious hindrances to the health of developing countries.