Artur Klimek

The paper aims to present recent trends in global trade and investment in advanced business services (ABS). Special attention is given to the position of Visegrád countries in international movements of services and associated activities. The research method applied in the study is the statistical analysis of aggregate data on trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). The data were extracted from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) databases. The main finding is that services are still less traded than merchandise. Still, knowledge-intensive services are gaining importance as their share in trade of services reaches 15%. As a result of the study, major problems with data regarding services were identified. The results confirm the global importance of the services based on knowledge. This is significant, as ABS create a narrow group of specialized services. Importantly, ABS are quite inclusive and many emerging economies become global providers of such services.

This paper has been devoted to the presentation of the current situation of multinational corporations from emerging economies (EMNCs). The research methods applied include the statistical analysis of data describing the operations of EMNCs and multiple case study of selected enterprises. The main conclusion drawn from the study concerns the worsening performance of the analysed firms. The main reason of the faltering financial results are the characteristics of industries in which EMNCs operate. Many large firms from emerging countries are strongly dependent on natural resources. Recent decline of demand from China caused strong global overcapacity of commodities. Moreover, the EMNCs are still influenced by the economic situation in their home economies. It is associated with the fact that their operations are not truly global yet. An additional reason is the lack of sustainable growth strategies which hinders the growth of the firms.