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The Internalization Theory of Foreign Direct Investment
The theory of internalization (also called transaction cost theory) offers an explanation of why foreign investment may be a more effective way of exploiting foreign resources and markets than exporting or licensing. It is a theory, therefore, of the multinational enterprise, whose hallmark, as observed earlier, is international production.
一国在开发国外资源及市场时，为什么进行对外投资可以比出口或是许可证更为有效，内部化理论（又称交易成本理论）对此做出了解释。首先，与人们所观察到的相一致，判断跨国公司的标志是国际化生产。
The internalization theory postulates that (1) markets can fail to allocate factor services and goods efficiently due to natural and government-induced externalities,(2) markets and firms are alternative ways to organize the exchange of factor services and goods,(3) exchange is internalized within a firm when its transaction costs are less than market transaction costs, and (4) the MNE is an institution that internalizes cross-national exchanges of factor services and goods(particularly intermediate products) through foreign direct investment (international production).
内部化理论的假设条件包括：
（1） 由于自身外部性和政府外部性的存在，市场配置生产要素和产品会失灵。
（2） 市场和企业均可作为组织安排交换生产要素和产品的方式。
（3） 当公司内部的交易成本低于市场的交易成本时，生产要素及产品的交易被内部化。
（4） 跨国公司通过对外直接投资将生产要素及产品（尤其是中间产品）的跨国交易内部化（国际生产）。
Markets become less-than-optimal allocators of resources when they fail to capture externalities in market prices. Natural externalities may be defined as ownership externalities, technical externalities, and public good externalities. Ownership externalities occur when a seller is not able to change users of a product. For instance, a knowledge innovator cannot charge users of that knowledge when the knowledge is disclosed without legal protection (patents and trademarks). Technical externalities occur whenever a product experiences increasing returns to scale. Public goods externalities occur in goods, such as knowledge, whose consumption by one individual does not lower their consumption by another individual. In addition to these natural externalities, government intervention in markets creates artificial externalities that cause a divergence between private and social cost and benefits: tariffs, subsidies, and other incentives, taxes, price controls, exchange restrictions, investment performance requirements, and so on.
在价格机制下如未能捕获外部性，市场不再是资源的最优配置方式。（企业）自身外部性可分为所有权外部性，技术外部性及公共产品外部性。当产品的卖方不能够对产品的使用者收取费用时，就存在所有权外部性问题。例如，在没有法律保障（专利权和商标权）的情况下公布新的知识，知识的创造者不能向新知识的使用人士收取费用。当产品的生产具有规模报酬递增的性质时，就存在技术的外部性。公共产品如知识，由个人使用时并不阻碍他人的使用，就产生了公共产品外部性问题。除此之外，市场中政府干预也产生了各种人为的外部性，这造成了私人成本与社会成本，私人收益和社会收益的不一致，如关税、补贴、税收、价格管制、贸易限制，投资收益要求等等。
Externalities may be regarded as the costs of organizing exchange, the cost of informing, monitoring, and rewarding buyers and sellers. Markets depend on prices to inform, monitor, and reward participants, and they become inefficient when externalities are not captured in price. In contrast, firms organize exchange through central direction and control of their operations and employee. Arm’s length market transactions give way to intrafirm transfers. In organizing exchange, firms incur the cost of systems to inform, monitor, and reward their employees. Internalization theory asserts that firms will replace external markets with internal flows of factor services and goods when the cost of doing so is less than the cost of organizing markets, that is , when internal transaction cost are less than external transaction costs.
外部性问题可视作组织交易的成本问题，这些成本包括通知、监督、回报买卖双方的费用。市场依靠价格来做到这一切，一旦价格机制下的外部性未被捕获，市场的参与者就变得丧失效率。相反，企业通过集中指导与营运控制来组织交易行为。这样，企业内部交易替代了公平市场交易。在组织交易行为时，企业存在通知、监督、以及回报员工等一系列成本。内部化理论认为，当生产要素及产品在企业内部流动所产生的成本低于外部市场的交易成本时，企业将取代市场。
Market failure is the most evident in the exchange of knowledge. When a firm creates new knowledge which then becomes disclosed to outsiders, that knowledge becomes a public goods.But a public goods cannot be priced by a market, because its marginal cost is zero: New users of the goods can be supplied at no additional cost. Furthermore, at a zero price, there would be no incetinve for firms to create knowledge.This externality can be partly overcome by the assignment of property rights(patents and trademarks) to the innovating firm, enabling it to restrict the use of the knowledge. However, only some of a firm’s knowledge can be legally protected: other knowledge must be protected through the firm’s own efforts to prevent disclosure to outsiders. The most direct way to prevent disclosure and thereby earn monopoly rent is for the firm to internalize its knowledge. Instead of selling(licensing) its knowledge to outsiders, the firm applies that knowledge only to production under its control. Internalization theory explains horizontal foreign investment, therefore, as a response to market failure in knowledge. Internalization enables a firm to “appropriate” an economic rent for its knowledge that cannot be obtained in external markets.
知识的交易最容易出现市场失灵。一家企业创造出新知识并对外披露后，这种新知识就成了一种公共产品。但是，公共产品是不能由市场定价的，因为其边际成本为零：公共产品的新用户无需支付附加成本便可获得产品的供应。更糟的是，当公共产品的价格为零时，企业将没有任何创新激励。解决这种公共产品外部性问题，可以采取赋予创新企业产权的方式，这样就能够限制新知识的使用权。然而，企业特有知识仅仅只有一部分能够受法律保护，另一部分知识只有通过企业自身的努力来避免外泄。企业为防范信息外泄和获取垄断利润，一个最直接的方式就是将其特有知识内部化。与其将特有知识出售或特许，企业不如自己掌控知识进行生产。因此，内部化理论把企业平行的对外投资归因于对知识在市场交易出现失灵时而采取的行动。内部化战略能够使企业占有其特有知识的经济租金而排除了外部市场的竞争。
Internalization theory also explains vertical integration as a replacement of inefficient external markets. Backward integration occurs when (1) there are high cost in coordinating successive production stages by market prices when buyers and sellers are few in numbers, (2) exchange extends over a lengthy period of time, and (3) buyers and sellers experience a high degree of uncertainty. Forward integration becomes an efficient way of organizing exchange when there is a high degree of interdependence between the manufacturing firm and marketing channel agencies and it is costly to constrain that interdependence through market prices and market contract.
内部化理论也解释了为什么纵向整合可以取代低效的市场。上游整合的背景包括：（1）市场上只有少数的参与者，通过市场价格协调连续生产过程的成本很高；（2）交易过程冗长费时；（3）买卖双方都面临很大程度的不确定性。
而前下游整合作为一种组织交易的有效方式，前提是生产企业与销售机构间有很强的依赖性，因为通过市场价格机制以及契约制衡的成本很高。
In sum, the theory of internalization posits that the multinational enterprise invests abroad in order to capture market externalities:
Economics of scale in production and marketing, the ownership and public-goods character of knowledge, and government-imposed market constraints. In other words, firm-specific knowledge and other assets lead to foreign direct investment whenever intrafirm transactions become less costly than external market transactions. From the perspective of internalization theory, the MNE is an institution designed to create and exploit internal markets.
总之，内部化理论假定跨国公司的对外投资是为了捕获市场的外部性，这种外部性包括生产及销售的规模经济效应、知识作为所有权及公共产品的特征、政府强加于市场的各种限制。通过对外投资，跨国公司完成了生产要素及产品的国际转移并且取得了比外部市场更为有效的资源配置。换言之，在涉及公司特有知识和资产的交易时，对外直接投资作为公司内部交易安排比市场外部交易成本更低。从内部化理论的观点来看，跨国公司是一种在创造并开发内部市场的组织机构。
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