Drawing on detailed data on some 150 foreign R&D establishments belonging to Sweden's 20 largest manufacturing enterprises, this paper tests a number of hypotheses as to the determinants of different types of such units. The relative importance of market-oriented R&D, i.e. R&D primarily...

By the end of the 1980s, the rapid and unbroken growth of Swedish industrial research and development (R&D) ended. The volume of industrial R&D performed in Sweden is now declining. Today, to an increasing extent, Swedish companies perform their R&D abroad. International decentralization of R&D...

This paper looks at how Norwegian multinational fish farming companies are embedded in the innovation system in Chile. The empirical part is mainly based on interviews with industry representatives in both countries as well as literature and document analyses. There are around 50 Norwegian...

Foreign subsidiaries acting as "integrated competence centres" is an organizational design that improves the building of capabilities in multinational corporations. In this knowledge-creating process the headquarter uses a bottom-to-top strategy, where the initial competence-building starts in...

Geographical diversification describes the degree to which a firm’s operations in a particular industry are dispersed across countries. This paper presents evidence on the geographical diversification within the EU of the 290-odd largest manufacturing firms in Europe. We also explore how...

This paper extends the theory of multinational corporations, identifying three distinct influences of internal trade liberalisation by a group of countries on the level and pattern of inward foreign direct investment (FDI). First, the tariff-jumping motive encourages plant consolidation. Second,...

Ireland’s low corporation tax regime has proved especially attractive to foreign multinational companies operating in high-tech sectors. Ireland’s increasing concentration in such sectors has facilitated the country’s rise in the international R&D rankings. On a sector by sector basis...

The paper explores the linkages between political risk, institutions and foreign direct investment inflows. Using different econometric techniques for a data sample of 83 developing countries and the period 1984 to 2003, we identify those indicators that matter most for the activities of...

Policymakers in developing countries have increasingly pinned their hopes on bilateral investment treaties (BITs) in order to improve their chances in the worldwide competition for foreign direct investment (FDI). However, the effectiveness of BITs in inducing higher FDI inflows is still open to...