LUSO-SPANISH-FRANCO-ENGLISH RELATIONS VIEWED FROM THE ENTRANCE OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT FUNDS

The main objective of the present paper is to study the relationships and the interrelationships among the financial flows (as Foreign Direct Investment – FDI) that entered the Portuguese, Spanish, French and English economies from 1970 till 2001. With this objective in mind this paper or communication begins by describing the methodology used, an econometric one, methodology that begins by the utilisation of various tests to appreciate the quality of the data series, namely their stationarity, integration and cointegration, that continues by the appreciation of the multilateral and bilateral causality among the four referred economies and ends with the Auto-Regressive Vector (VAR) modelling. After this it presents the data bank and the origins of the different Foreign Direct Investment series (the FDI entrances). The presentation of an empirical work applied to the four western European economies referred earlier and the interpretation of the results are the last parts of the paper.