How Do You Measure the Global Power of Multinational Companies?

How Do You Measure the Global Power of Multinational Companies?

G. Monray on creating an index to measure the multinational business value of countries

For decades, rankings of the world's largest corporations have attracted the attention of investors, executives, economists and policymakers.

But a ranking of companies does not necessarily tell us which countries have the greatest concentration of multinational corporate power.

That was the starting point for a 2018 study by G. Monray, then publishing as Jorge Mongay Hurtado, titled Measuring the Multinational Business Value: An Indexing Approach, published in the Expert Journal of Economics. The study used the Forbes Global 2000 as its principal database and developed a new indexing approach to measure the multinational business value represented by different countries.

Rather than simply counting how many multinational corporations a country had, the research incorporated their position in the Forbes ranking and assigned numerical values to their relative weight.

The analysis covered 1,923 corporations across 61 countries. It then grouped countries according to cultural clusters and trading blocs and introduced a population-adjusted measure designed to provide a different perspective on multinational corporate concentration.

The central question was deceptively simple:

How can we measure the global business value of multinational corporations at country level?

INTERVIEW

Q: What motivated you to create a new index instead of simply using the Forbes Global 2000 ranking?

G. Monray: The Forbes Global 2000 is an extremely valuable source of information. But I believed there was more information inside the database than the ranking itself revealed. Forbes ranks individual corporations.My question was different: What does the presence and value of those multinational corporations tell us about the countries in which they are based? If a country has ten companies in the Global 2000, that tells us something. But if another country has ten companies occupying much higher positions in the ranking, the two countries are not equivalent. I wanted to capture that difference.

Q: So the objective was to move from a company ranking to a country-level measure?

G. Monray: Exactly. The original Forbes ranking tells us which corporations are large and how they compare with one another. I wanted to aggregate that information and construct a measure of multinational business value by country. That required considering not only the number of corporations represented but also their relative position and value within the global ranking.

Q: How did you construct the index?

G. Monray: The starting point was the Forbes Global 2000. The Forbes methodology uses four principal variables to rank corporations: sales, profits, assets and market value. I retained that underlying ranking and assigned a numerical value to companies according to their position. Then I grouped the corporations according to their country of origin and aggregated their values. This allowed me to calculate an overall multinational business value for each country represented in the study.

Q: How large was the dataset?

G. Monray: The research ultimately analyzed 1,923 corporations from 61 countries, taken from the 2,000 corporations appearing in the Forbes Global 2000. That gave us a substantial international dataset. It also allowed us to move beyond individual corporate analysis and examine patterns at the national, cultural and trading-bloc levels.

Q: Why did you use 1,923 rather than all 2,000 companies?

G. Monray: Because the analysis was based on the corporations for which the necessary information could be properly organized and attributed to the relevant countries and industries. The objective was consistency in the construction of the index rather than simply maximizing the number of observations.

Q: What does "multinational business value" actually mean in your research?

G. Monray: It represents the aggregate value and presence of multinational corporations associated with a particular country within the framework of the study. It is important to understand that this is not the same thing as national GDP. It is not a measure of total national wealth. It is specifically focused on the global corporate presence represented by major multinational corporations. That distinction is fundamental.

Q: Why is the number of multinational corporations not enough?

G. Monray: Because quantity and weight are different things.Suppose Country A has 20 multinational corporations and Country B has 10. At first sight, Country A appears stronger. But if the ten companies in Country B are among the world's largest corporations, while the twenty companies in Country A occupy much lower positions, the comparison changes substantially. The index attempts to capture that difference.

Q: You also adjusted the index for population. Why?

G. Monray: Because absolute corporate presence can sometimes distort the picture. Large countries naturally have advantages in terms of population, domestic markets and the number of companies they can generate. A population-adjusted measure asks another question: Given the size of the country's population, how significant is its multinational corporate presence? That provides a different perspective.

In the study, for example, Switzerland's general index and its population-adjusted index produced substantially different results.

Q: Why is that distinction relevant to international economics?

G. Monray: Because absolute size is not always the same as intensity. A very large country can have an enormous number of multinational corporations simply because it has a very large population and domestic economy. A smaller country may have a much smaller absolute number of corporations but an extraordinary concentration of global companies relative to its population. The population-adjusted index helps reveal that phenomenon.

Q: You also analyzed cultural clusters. Why introduce culture into a corporate-value index?

G. Monray: Because multinational corporations do not emerge in a cultural vacuum. The research used the GLOBE cultural-cluster classification to examine whether multinational business value showed different patterns across cultural environments. The clusters included regions such as South Asia, Latin America, Nordic countries, Anglo countries, Germanic Europe, Latin Europe, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Confucian Asia. This allows us to ask whether there are broader patterns beyond individual countries.

Q: Did you also examine trading blocs?

G. Monray: Yes. Countries were also grouped according to major trading arrangements, including NAFTA, the EU-27, Mercosur and ASEAN, with a separate category for the rest of the world. This provides another layer of analysis. A country can be understood individually, culturally and within its broader economic and trading environment.

Q: What did the analysis tell you about the geographical concentration of multinational business value?

G. Monray: It showed that multinational corporate value is highly concentrated geographically. That is one of the important insights from the index. The global economy is not simply a collection of equally distributed multinational companies. A relatively limited number of countries account for a very substantial share of the multinational corporate value represented in the dataset.

Q: Were financial and service companies particularly important?

G. Monray: Yes. The research classified corporations according to their industries and created a distinction between industrial corporations and the services and financial sector. This made it possible to examine the relative contribution of what we might broadly describe as the productive economy and the services or financial economy.

That distinction is important because countries can have very different profiles of multinational corporate activity.

Q: Why does the sectoral composition matter?

G. Monray: Because having a large multinational sector does not tell us everything about the structure of that corporate presence. A country dominated by manufacturing multinationals has a different economic profile from one whose multinational value is concentrated heavily in financial services.

The sector matters. It affects employment, investment, exports, value chains and the relationship between multinational corporations and the domestic economy.

Q: One of the interesting concepts in the study is the "Distance to Index." What does that measure?

G. Monray: It provides a way of understanding how far a country is from the reference level established by the index. For example, a value above the reference point indicates that the country has a greater representation of multinational business value than the benchmark. It therefore provides another way of interpreting the relative position of countries rather than simply looking at absolute corporate numbers.

Q: What is the strategic value of an index like this for executives?

G. Monray: It can help executives understand the competitive environment in which multinational companies operate. If a company is considering international expansion, it is useful to understand not only the attractiveness of the market but also the corporate ecosystem surrounding it.

• Which countries generate the largest multinational corporations?

• Where are global companies concentrated?

• Which sectors dominate?

• How does a country compare with others of a similar size?

• Those questions provide strategic context.

Q: Could policymakers also use this type of analysis?

G. Monray: Potentially, yes. Governments interested in attracting multinational investment need to understand what makes their economies attractive to large corporations. But the index is not designed to tell policymakers what they should do. It provides information about the existing global distribution of multinational corporate value. The interpretation and policy implications require additional analysis.

Q: Does having a high multinational business value automatically mean that a country has a stronger economy?

G. Monray: Not necessarily. That would be an important misinterpretation. The index measures multinational corporate presence and value. It does not measure every dimension of economic welfare, competitiveness or national development. A country can have a very strong multinational corporate sector while still having weaknesses in other economic or social dimensions. The index should therefore be treated as one analytical instrument rather than a universal measure of economic success.

Q: What is the relationship between multinational corporations and globalization in your research?

G. Monray: Multinational corporations are one of the principal organizational mechanisms through which globalization occurs. They connect countries through investment, production, finance, technology, employment and international supply chains. Therefore, understanding where multinational business value is concentrated helps us understand an important part of the global economic architecture.

Q: What is the broader academic contribution of the research?

G. Monray: I think the main contribution is methodological. Instead of accepting an existing ranking as the final piece of information, the study asks: What else can we learn from the underlying data? That is an important principle in research. Data often contains more information than the original presentation reveals. The researcher can sometimes create additional indicators that allow us to ask new questions.

Q: And what is the main lesson for international business managers?

G. Monray: That global corporate power needs to be analyzed from several perspectives. Don't look only at the largest company. Look at the country. Don't look only at the country. Look at the cultural environment. Don't look only at culture. Look at the trading bloc and the industry structure. And don't look only at absolute corporate size.

Consider the relationship between corporate presence and population. International business is multidimensional.

The 2018 study by G. Monray was published in Expert Journal of Economics, Volume 6, Issue 1, pages 1–14. It was received on February 9, 2018, accepted on March 15 and published on March 23, 2018.

The research transformed the Forbes Global 2000 from a ranking of individual corporations into a broader analytical framework for studying multinational business value by country. It incorporated corporate position, number of companies, population, cultural clusters, trading blocs and industry composition.

The broader significance is therefore methodological as much as economic.

A ranking tells you who is at the top. An index can help you understand the structure behind the ranking.

For international business researchers and executives, that distinction matters.

The global economy is shaped not only by the size of individual corporations, but by where those corporations are concentrated, how they are distributed across industries, and how their presence relates to the economic and cultural environments in which they originate.

This is a retrospective, interview-style reconstruction based on the 2018 publication and its original dataset. The index reflects the data and methodology used in the study and should not be interpreted as a current ranking of multinational corporate power in 2026.