Switzerland and the industrialisation of Japan: Swiss direct investments and technology transfers to Japan during the twentieth century

Pierre-Yves Donzé

Business History, 2010, vol. 52, issue 5, 713-736

Abstract: After the United States, Switzerland was one of the main sources of FDI to Japan in the twentieth century. Swiss multinationals that have invested there have three characteristics in common. First of all, they take a long-term perspective. The main companies present at the beginning of the twentieth century (Brown Boveri, Ciba, Nestle, Sandoz, Sulzer) were still some of the largest Swiss companies in Japan at the end of the century. Second, they gradually shifted from distribution to production during the inter-war period. Third, they backed Japan's industrialisation by strengthening historically underdeveloped sectors (chemicals) and by contributing to the growth of the manufacturing industry (machines).

Keywords: Switzerland; Japan; foreign direct investment (FDI); technology transfer; twentieth century (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076791003763201 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:bushst:v:52:y:2010:i:5:p:713-736

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FBSH20

DOI: 10.1080/00076791003763201

Access Statistics for this article

Business History is currently edited by Professor John Wilson and Professor Steven Toms

More articles in Business History from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().