not responsive to appropriate technology and serve to distort factor prices, they do in fact respond with minor adjustments after the plant design has been implemented in order to adjust somewhat to local conditions.
Two additional points are worthy of note here. First, local firms do no better in adapting a more labor-intensive technology. This presumably is because they tend to adopt or imitate the actions of the multinational affiliates. Second, some, albeit relatively few, MNCs tend to become even more capital-intensive than when they first arrived on the market. Walter Chudson (1971) discusses a case in which a mechanized cashew-nut processing plant in Tanzania was made more capital-intensive, with the result that the firm was more efficient and was able to capture a larger world market share, desirable from both a private and social standpoint because it was able to increase output and wealth. This provides interesting implications for the guidelines that appropriate technology theorists now use.
The question of appropriate technology can also
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