The World Investment Report 1992 analyses the relationship between TNCs and economic growth. Since the early 1980s, world investment flows have been expanding rapidly, much faster than other key economic variables such as world trade and world output. A number of major new developments in the global economic situation have placed foreign direct investment in a central position to influence the pace and the nature of economic growth in most countries. Finally, developing countries themselves have implemented notable and, in many cases, dramatic policy changes, in order to open their economies to greater contributions by transnational corporations.