Sylwia Talar

Steady development of technology, specifically of the Internet, fundamentally changed the conditions in which enterprises operate. Barriers for expansion abroad have been significantly lessened. One of the most important consequences of currently forming Internet-based economy is a process of reduction of the advantage the international corporations had over smaller, innovative companies that used modern information and communication technologies. Appearance and development of this kind of subjects – micromultinationals (mMNEs) – suggests a need to modify the traditionally used internationalization models. The aim of this paper is to analyse the workings of mMNEs in the Internet-based economy and to single out their most important characteristics, basing on the chosen examples. In order to fulfill this goal, an analysis of source texts was conducted, along with implementation of comparative analysis, deduction, and descriptive method. MMNEs are new, distinct entities that came into being as one of the consequences of market changes due to the emergence of Internet-based economy; their expansion poses a lot of challenges and needs further deep research.

The main aim of the paper is to identify trade policy measures and barriers in e-commerce. The analysis took account of the actions and regulations typical of traditional trade policy and new barriers related to the technology on which cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) is based. The addi- tional objective is to illustrate the coordination activities undertaken by governments at the international level and the contribution of international organizations to the harmonization of CBEC regulations. The study reviews literature form the Scopus, Ebsco, ProQest, and Web of Knowledge databases. The actions of international organizations were studied and legislative acts and other documents issued by them were analysed. All information and research results were syn- thesized and numerous detailed findings provided. The overall conclusion is that still much has to be done to establish a system of rules conducive to long-standing CBEC growth, which requires much further research and is very complicated as it requires not only introducing free trade rules in traditional meaning but also providing open and safe use of ICT.