The panel explores the changing role of multinational companies in shaping development trajectories in the midst of today’s geoeconomic turmoil. Historically, MNCs have been regarded as key agents of globalization, investment, and technology transfer, offering opportunities for industrial upgrading and integration into international markets. Theoretical perspectives have, however, provided contrasting assessments of their developmental impact. Dependency theory and world-systems analysis underline the risks of asymmetric relations, dependency, and vulnerability, while Hymer’s early work emphasized issues of control and the concentration of decision-making power. In contrast, Dunning’s eclectic paradigm (OLI) and Vernon’s product life-cycle theory highlighted efficiency, innovation, and the potential for positive spillovers. More recently, global value chain (Gereffi) and global production network (Coe & Yeung) frameworks have emphasized both the opportunities for functional upgrading and the risks of being locked into low-value activities.

In today’s context, these debates acquire new urgency. The fragmentation of globalization, the U.S.–China rivalry, the war in Ukraine, and the EU’s competitiveness and resilience challenges reshape the strategic choices of MNCs and redefine their relationships with states. Industrial policy, security concerns, and efforts to secure supply chains increasingly guide corporate strategies, challenging earlier assumptions of efficiency-driven globalization. For host countries, this creates a dual dynamic: MNCs remain crucial sources of investment, technology, and market access, yet they also generate new forms of dependence, fiscal pressures, and exposure to external shocks.

This panel examines these tensions across regions, with particular attention to less developed economies/regions of Europe, developing and emerging economies. It seeks to link classical and contemporary theories with current geoeconomic realities, asking whether MNCs today are still engines of development, or whether they have become agents of fragmentation and destabilization in an uncertain world economy.

This panel is organised by the EADI Working Group on "Multinational corporations and development"