Stephen Hymer

Many authors have used Hymer's theories to develop new theoretical approaches in the field of international business. One of these new theories is the OLI paradigm (ownership-location-internalization) also known as the eclectic paradigm, developed by John Dunning (1977), which adopts Hymer's firms' specific advantages.

Later, Hymer used Marxian language and concepts more explicitly. In a series of articles published in the 1970s, he considered the relationship between nation-states and multinational firms, detailing their role in the creation of an international division of labor. Hymer argued that this hierarchal division of labor was a macrocosm of the internal division of labor reproduced within the multinational corporation. Hymer did not believe that these firms had become more powerful than nation-states; instead, multinationals were firmly rooted in the major financial centers of the world, and they tended to reinforce existing geographic and spatial boundaries and dependencies. Papers and articles on this and various other topics articles were compiled by Hymer's graduate students from the New School for Social Research in The Multinational Corporation: A Radical Approach. Papers by Stephen Herbert Hymer, published by Cambridge University Press in 1979.

Hymer's theories have strongly influenced other economists, like Cantwell and Dunning, and were elaborated by Hymer's dissertation advisor, Charles P. Kindleberger in American Business Abroad, series of lectures published in 1969. The latter played an important role in the posthumous publication of Hymer's dissertation.

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.

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 where he met his wife, Gilda, also from Montreal. He taught economics at Yale University and had 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.

Stephen Herbert Hymer (15 November 1934 – 2 February 1974) was a Canadian economist. 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.