Brian Palmer-Rubin, Mariana Rangel Padilla, Steven Samford
Book project · Working title
Foreign investment can bring jobs, technology, and access to international markets. But attracting multinational firms does not automatically produce lasting development. Some firms build connections that strengthen local suppliers, workforce skills, and productive capabilities. Others remain disconnected from the surrounding economy or reinforce low-wage, low-value production.
This book project asks when multinational firms become partners in economic upgrading—and what makes that cooperation possible.
Mexico offers a revealing setting. Deep integration with North American markets has brought sustained multinational investment, yet industries differ substantially in how that investment connects to domestic firms, institutions, and development priorities.
The project combines research on firms and business associations with executive surveys, interviews, and comparative sectoral analysis. Its scope includes auto parts, electronics, steel, textiles, and agricultural exports.
ENLACE: Collaborative Research and Training
ENLACE is the multi-campus research lab through which we develop this project and related research on multinational corporations and development in Mexico. It connects researchers and undergraduate research assistants at the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan, and Tecnológico de Monterrey.
The lab combines collaborative research with hands-on training in research design, data analysis, and writing. Students contribute to shared projects while developing substantive research of their own. Cross-campus collaboration brings different perspectives and local knowledge into a common research agenda.
ENLACE is both a foundation for the book’s research and a longer-term space for studying North American political economy.
Regional Integration and Domestic Development
Mexico belongs to a broader group of middle-income countries—including Poland and Vietnam—whose development is closely tied to regional production networks and foreign investment. These countries attract multinational firms, but differ in how they harness that investment to advance domestic development plans.
We situate Mexico within this wider landscape to ask how governments, domestic businesses, and multinational firms turn international integration into stronger local suppliers, skills, and technological capabilities. The challenge is not simply to attract investment, but to connect it to domestic development priorities.
Varieties of MNC Embeddedness
We draw on the sociological concept of embeddedness to understand how multinational firms’ activities are shaped by the relationships in which they operate. We distinguish economic ties through investment and production, institutional ties to business associations and public agencies, and social ties among executives and other local actors. These different forms of embeddedness help explain how MNCs engage with Mexican market and state institutions—and when that engagement supports domestic upgrading rather than privileged access or exclusion.
Related Publications
Embedded Multinationals: When MNCs Choose Voice Over Exit
With Steven Samford.
World Politics 79(1), 2027 (forthcoming). PDF
Work in Progress
Embedded Capital: Multinational Firms, Business Associations, and the Politics of Upgrading in Mexico
With Mariana Rangel Padilla and Steven Samford.