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Inward investment is vital to the economic life of both the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China. By injecting capital from overseas, it generates exports, creates jobs, and brings advanced technology and new management styles. Legal regulations and government policies in this regard are always geared to reflect a balance between encouraging foreign business activities and maintaining certain degrees of control upon them. Based on expertise and experience that history shows, the United Kingdom offers an environment under which foreign investors can benefit from a rather complete legal framework. China today is also an attractive place for overseas capital, as its virtually limitless market is now becoming increasingly open to the world. This thesis is designed to examine the structure and performance of respective legal regulations concerning inward investment in the United Kingdom and China. With a view of gaining enlightenment from each other's experience, the thesis identifies and compares the following aspects which are of close relevance to inward investment issues, including basic structure of investment market, adoption of investment vehicles, roles of financial markets, real estate investment, taxation of investment behaviour, and settlement of disputes by arbitration. It is proposed that the analysis, materials and conclusions of this research may orientate foreign investors to get a deeper understanding about the UK investment market, and equally enable them to target their Chinese business in a more effective way.

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This study investigated whether known economic and international business theories available in the literature are meaningful enough to explain the nature, existence and role of multinational companies (MNCs) in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. Two sets of questionnaires were distributed in major cities of Saudi Arabia - one set for 100 multinational managers and another for 280 multinational customers. 234 questionnaires were collected - 45 from multinational managers and 189 from customers. This represents a total response rate of 62 percent, which is adequate for this study. The empirical results, supported with comprehensive secondary data, confirmed virtually all of the research hypotheses. The study found that joint ventures are the dominant form of multinational business in Saudi Arabia, both in manufacturing and service industries. The core roles of MNCs in the Saudi-foreign ventures are evident in the cross-border value-adding activities of marketing, trading, manufacturing, consulting, contracting, project management, insurance, hotel operation and banking. Likewise, MNCs provide licensing, franchising, financing services and various auxiliary roles in the Kingdom. Therefore, the multinationality of a firm or a group of firms operating across national boundaries is not necessarily synonymous with international production - the main subject of contemporary multinational theories. The respondents generally perceived the competitiveness of MNCs operating in Saudi Arabia as a function of a number of economic, management, marketing, technological and other variables. They also perceived the contributions of MNCs to the Kingdom's socio-economic developments as significant and positive. The study also found that understanding Islamic values and ethics is important for MNCs. In this regard, the researcher looked at some objective indicators of business success and related them to selected measures of MNCs' local cultural awareness and responsiveness. The results indicate that the business success of multinationals operating in Saudi Arabia is positively related to their local cultural awareness and responsiveness. Along this line, this study covers some vital elements of Islamic culture, which will help MNCs understand further the cultural needs, values and sensitivities of the Saudi people and Muslims in general.

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This research examines the nature and impact of financial repression in the Trinidad and Tobago economy using cointegration time series techniques and disequilibrium econometrics. While the former is employed to estimate the impact on savings, investment and growth, the latter is mainly used to test whether the characteristics which depict a financially repressed economy are present in Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago has not previously been the subject of such a study, and neither estimation methods have been used to investigate financial repression. While the real interest has been most frequently used to measure financial repression, six proxies are utilised in this study: the real interest rate; dummy variables; commercial banks' reserve requirement; inflation; the difference between the domestic and the foreign interest rate and a variable to measure the overvaluation of a country's currency. With respect to the latter there are two definitions: the difference between the official and the blackmarket exchange rate and the degree of exchange rate misalignment. The results using real interest rates and inflation measures of financial repression suggest that while liberalisation cannot be seen as the solution to increasing savings and investment it may promote economic growth. When all the other proxies are examined the impact of financial repression on the economy is negative albeit statistically insignificant in most instances. There is some indication that exchange rate should be devalued so as to reduce exchange rate misalignment and reduce the widening gap between the official and blackmarket rate. On the basis of these results the McKinnon-Shaw hypothesis cannot be rejected. However the results when inflation and real interest rates are the relevant proxies for financial repression as well as the low significance levels of other proxies, ought to serve as warning signals to avoid implementing drastic liberalisation measures too quickly.

There has been concern on the part of Nigerians, in particular, and Africans, in general, as to who is controlling the economic activities in Nigeria and Africa. This concern has caused some governments in Africa to initiate laws and regulations that tilt toward the encouragement of Africans to invest or buy shares in areas that are known to be controlled by foreign investors. This study examines the extent and the impact of direct private foreign investment in Nigeria. Data obtained on Nigeria and other African countries were employed. The result suggests that there is foreign investment in the major economic activities in Nigeria and that the inflow foreign investment has not helped the economic development of Nigeria.

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