Stephen Hymer
| Stephen Hymer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
15 November 1934 Montreal, Quebec |
| Died | 2 February 1974 (aged 39) Shandaken, New York |
| Nationality | Canada |
| Field | International economics , International Business, , Internationalization |
| School or tradition |
Marxian economics |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Influences | Karl Marx |
| Contributions | Theory of foreign direct investments |
Stephen Herbert Hymer (15 November 1934 – 4 February 1974), Canadian economist, was born in Montreal, and died after a car accident in Shandaken, New York. His research focused on the activities of multinational firms, which was the subject of his PhD dissertation The International Operations of National Firms: A Study of Direct Foreign Investment, presented in 1960, but published posthumously in 1976, by the Department of Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Charles P. Kindleberger, his thesis supervisor, submitted it for publication, as mentioned by him on the introduction of Hymer's thesis dissertation.
Stephen Herbert Hymer’s father was a Jewish clothing store owner from Eastern Europe and his mother was the bookkeeper. This inspired him to research the impact that multinational corporations have on local enterprises, as he feared the presence of new competitors might end up affecting his family's business.
Hymer received a B.A. with first-class honors in Economics and Political Science from McGill University in his native Montreal in 1955. He enrolled at MIT in the fall of that year to study industrial relations, having moved to Boston with his wife, Gilda, and their two sons. From 1970 until the time of this death, Hymer worked as an economics professor at the New School for Social Research in New York.
He combined his interests in Industrial Organization and International Trade in his doctoral thesis.
Stephen Hymer is considered to be the father of International Business due to his contributions related to Foreign Direct Investment as well as his studies and academic production on the field of theories of multinational enterprises.
Hymer's main contributions, which predated most of today’s existing theory on the subjects of multinational enterprises and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), are collected in eleven documents, including his 1960 doctoral thesis. Before his theory on FDI, all investments were considered to be mere capital movements across borders. These movements of capital were thought to be determined mainly by the differences in interest rates between the countries. Hymer established that there was a distinction between financial investments and these kinds of investments, which he named Foreign Direct Investment: the latter gives the firm control over the business activities in other countries whereas portfolio investment does not.
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