International economics slices across the sector-based organization of other fields of economics (industrial organization, labor, public finance, financial institutions and markets), and faces the same problems of coherence and integration as the study of international business. Nonetheless, economic analysis enjoys a great advantage in its unified theoretical view of market processes and allocative decisions, which supplies a map that can indicate the road(s) leading from any condition or disturbances to any outcome that it might influence. In the case of the MNE, the most traveled boulevard is transaction cost analysis of the "firm vs. market" problem—why some allocation decisions are made through spot transactions or arm's-length contracts, while others are internalized within business organizations. The transaction-cost approach treats the MNE as one species of multi-market firm. It helps us to frame any questions about the MNE's decision making in a manner consistent with the logic of why organizational links between internationally decentralized business units outperform their interaction through arm's-length markets. Of course, a framework that characterizes MNEs' decision making in any given domain should also show how their decisions are interrelated. This approach to MNEs' behavior, parading under various banners (notably John Dunning's OLI framework), seems serviceable for organizing our knowledge about the MNE. It sustained my recent effort to comprehend and summarize the last fifteen years of research on the MNE without conspicuous breakdowns (Caves, 1996).