Our seventh lecture on the third module on the economic development of nations. We'll wrap it up with a little bit of explanation as to why you should even care about this subject. You know, most of us won't be working in the public sector where we'll have the ability to may, maybe make a difference in any of these policies. Most of us won't be presidents of nations. But we all are citizens, and we have the chance to vote, and so we should care, at a minimum, for that reason. But, perhaps the larger question is, how does this matter to international business? As we talk about globalization and the global business environment,. Why should we care about this question? Why are some countries richer than others? And that question is important for the following reason. Which I will state very simply, but is probably much more complex. Before I give you that, that answer, let me ask you a question. Can you think for a minute of and I'm, I'm speaking to you in English but there, many of you are from all over the world. Can you give me three brands or companies that you are familiar with from South Korea. Maybe you are thinking of LG. Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, I could keep going. Right there, without thinking very much, I came up with several companies that are from South Korea. I'm going to give you another country. Think about Haiti for a minute. They recently experienced a horrible, devastating natural disaster. Can you think of a successful brand or company from Haiti? Or Afghanistan? Or the Congo? It's difficult. Now that is not to criticize those countries, its very unfortunate that that's the case. But what we see is, is a very simple observation. Successful countries, like South Korea, produce successful companies. And the reverse is true. Successful companies come from successful countries. In other words, if an economy develops, some of these factors or all these factors. If they fight corruption and develop, the successful property rights systems or have natural resources that they administer effectively. If the private sector develops, successfully. If the political system in whatever its form allows for successful economic wealth creation. All of those factors lead to an environment where companies or private entities can develop that will grow and help the economy grow even more. And the reverse of course, is true. Let's look at this for a minute by looking at. The list of the largest companies in the world. And this is not the only way to look at this, I realize that. But here is here is a a list of the Fortune Global 500. Which is the 500 largest ter firms in the world, based on their sales or revenue. And we see that on that list we have 132 companies from the Untied States, we have 89 from a very rapidly growing China, and the other countries on this list including South Korea Japan or countries that we saw at the top of our list of wealthiest nations in the world. We don't see any countries listed here that aren't very well off. If we go into this further we can see, we can filter this and look at which countries are represented even with one with one company and we see that there is some diversity. We see in many of our growing economies, like Brazil and Mexico, represented on this list and so, there does seem to be some correlation between an economy getting its wheels turning and becoming successful growing and developing companies. And so we want to emphasize that when we look at the global economy because from, from an international business perspective, we're looking at cross-border trade and cross-border investment and we want to help if you're working for a multinational company or a local company. You want to help that company grow, perhaps cross borders. And you will see that generally many of that, much of that economic growth on the part of companies will, be, a benefit to the home country, hopefully the host country and also will be facilitated by the successful infrastructure that the home and host countries provide. And so, therefore, the reason you should care about this, or the so what, is that we've been talking about economic wealth development because we want to understand how to develop successful international businesses in this internationally globalizing business environment that we, all live and operate in. So that's the end of Module 3. I hope that you've gained a better understanding of the economic development of nations.
