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Overseas Chinese communities are an important determinant in the location choice of greenfield investments made by mainland Chinese multinational enterprises across European regions. Conceptually embedded in a relational approach, this effect is shown through an empirical analysis of an exhaustive set of investment projects across NUTS-1 regions in twenty-six European countries for the period 2003-2010. When controlling for endogeneity bias and the embeddedness of existing Chinese economic activity, we find that the importance of overseas communities in the location choices of Chinese firms is based on increased access to strategic information. Our results confirm that the relationship between the size of an overseas Chinese community and the probability of Chinese investment is stronger for communities hosting newer generations of Chinese migrants; in addition, they partially corroborate that this relationship is stronger when the education level of the community's Chinese migrants is higher. Our findings are particularly robust in the context of knowledge-intensive sectors and high value-added functions.

Cross-border greenfield investment in the financial services sector is increasingly understood not as isolated flows, but as a complex, dynamic global system. This systemic perspective is essential for understanding its holistic structure and evolution amidst globalisation and digital transformation. This paper utilises financial services greenfield investment projects from 100 major economies from 2003 to 2021 to construct the Global Financial Services Greenfield FDI Network (GFS-GFN). By combining Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models (TERGMs), we systematically investigate its dynamic evolutionary features and endogenous mechanisms. The findings reveal the following: (1) System-wide, the network exhibits persistent expansion, “small-world” properties, and a pronounced “rich club” effect among source countries. (2) Nodally, the structure has evolved from a US-UK “dual-core” to a multipolar configuration, as emerging hubs like China, the UAE, and Singapore rapidly approach the traditional centres. (3) Structurally, the network has fragmented from Euro-American dominance into five major communities, forming a diverse, complementary pattern. Network evolution is primarily driven by endogenous mechanisms. Investment relationships widely exhibit reciprocity, preferential attachment, transitive closure, and marked path dependence.

Purpose This study aims to test the impact of different institutional quality indicators on two modes of foreign direct investment (FDI)-greenfield investment and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) for a sample of 110 countries over the period 2003–2017. Design/methodology/approach The authors develop a model of well-known FDI determinants, such as market size and potential, openness, the value of the national currency and the quality of institutions. The authors examine one-by-one five different institutional factors: law and order, investment profile of the host country, control of corruption (anti-corruption); democratic accountability, and government stability, applying a generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator that assures no endogeneity and reverse causality of the key explanatory variables. Findings The results point out the fact that fertile institutional conditions for attracting greenfield FDI to developing countries require law and order, good investment conditions and a state of democracy, but not necessarily tight control of corruption and a stable government. On the other hand, the appropriate institutional environment for attracting cross-border M&A sales flows to developing countries includes strong law and order, good investment conditions, strict control of corruption and strong democratic accountability. The results for developed countries show overall smaller importance of institutions as a determinant of both types of FDI. Originality/value This is the first study to analyze the differentiated determinants of the two modes of investment. The study holds implications for crafting two different policies for attracting greenfield FDI and M&A sales.

This paper investigates empirically whether inward greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) is related to greater sectoral innovative activity in the host narrow territorial units (provinces). We combine several sources of data on Italy to estimate panel count models, regressing the annual number of patents in each province and industry against a series of lagged FDI variables. Our results show that a positive relationship between FDI and local patenting emerges only for services. In particular, we find that larger inward FDI in services positively influences local patenting activity in knowledge-intensive business services. These results are robust to endogeneity and the inclusion of province controls and fixed effects.

Using data on greenfield investment in German districts from 2003 to 2010, we examine how regional development policies affect the decision of multinational corporations to locate facilities in Germany. We are interested in whether regional development policies accumulate to increase the attractiveness of a region and whether some policies are necessary to attract foreign investors. Applying count data models and geographic weighted regression, the results indicate that, on average, regional development policies increase the attractiveness of German districts for multinational firms. We find that place-based policies have the strongest effect on investments in the East German lagging regions. However, policies predominantly attract standardised types of investments that require considerable capital investments but not specialised location advantages.

The largest regional disparities in CEE countries are between capital and non-capital city regions. MNCs invest in these regions for various reasons, contributing to regional development exogenously. In this paper we analyse location decisions of FDI investments in the period 2003-2010. We find that the most important location factors for FDI are market accessibility, strategic assets, institutional quality and agglomeration, in the post-crisis era even more than before. Presently, second-tier city regions are not capable of offering all these factors simultaneously. For improving their opportunities and contribution to European cohesion and convergence, more substantial and direct investments are needed. Without these, the recently suggested competitiveness opportunities of second-tier city regions are difficult to obtain Las mayores disparidades regionales en los países del centro y este de Europa se observan entre las regiones con las capitales y el resto. Las empresas multinacionales invierten en estas regiones por distintas razones, contribuyendo de manera exógena al desarrollo regional. En este artículo, analizamos las decisiones de localización de las inversiones directas extranjeras entre 2003 y 2010. Encontramos que los factores más importantes de las inversiones extranjeras son la accesibilidad del mercado, las ventajas estratégicas, la calidad institucional y aglomeración, más aún en la época después de la crisis. En la actualidad, las regiones con ciudades secundarias no son capaces de ofrecer todos estos factores al mismo tiempo. Para mejorar sus oportunidades y contribuciones a la cohesión y convergencia europea se requieren mayores inversiones. Sin éstas, las oportunidades de competir mencionadas anteriormente para las regiones con ciudades secundarias serían difíciles de obtener.

Despite the empirical relevance, the privatization literature paid little attention to the effects of the owner-manager relationship and the implications of foreign direct investment (FDI). We focus on these aspects, and show the relationship between privatization and greenfield FDI when the owners design strategic managerial incentive contracts. We show that there is complementarity between privatization and greenfield FDI. Whether incentive delegation (compared to no incentive delegation) increases the degree of privatization in the presence of FDI is ambiguous; it depends on whether the degree of privatization that attracts FDI is higher or lower than the degree of privatization that maximizes domestic welfare under FDI.

The powerful attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) is particularly important for further development of tourism. The strategically focused attraction of FDI in tourism has a much higher significance because of the multiple effects in relation to other segments of the economy. In this context, it is necessary to highlight the investment engagement and the presence of globally branded luxury hotels. The purpose of the study is to assess the macroeconomic environment, the effects of greenfield FDI in tourism and, consequently, the presence of global hotel brands using the comparative analysis of the selected countries as the methodological basis of this study. The research results indicate that a favorable macroeconomic environment plays an important role in attracting foreign capital. Countries that have a more favorable macroeconomic environment attract more greenfield FDI, and provide a greater presence of global hotel brands, and thus greater competitiveness. Also, the political stability, the encouraging macroeconomic business conditions, the elimination of administrative and legislative barriers, the elimination of the country's image as a corrupt destination and tourism staff education at all levels are particularly important for FDI in tourism.

Purpose Cities are host to many of the world’s knowledge intensive research and innovation clusters. As such, they are likely to be attractive locations for emerging market multinational enterprises (MNEs) seeking to engage in knowledge seeking “springboard” type firm-level catch-up strategies. The purpose of this study is to therefore explore whether city-based research-intensive clusters containing deep pools of location bounded (i.e. “sticky”) knowledge are a stronger driver for greenfield research and development (R&D)-related FDI projects for Chinese MNEs than they are for developed market MNEs. Design/methodology/approach The authors use logistic modelling on 97,163 worldwide greenfield FDI projects to explore the relative likelihoods of Chinese MNEs engaging in R&D-related greenfield (i.e. “strategic asset seeking”) FDI projects as well as how city type (global or research-intensive cluster city) moderates this relationship for Chinese MNEs. Findings The authors find that Chinese MNEs are more likely to engage in overseas R&D FDI projects (compared with other types of project) than DMNEs and that research-intensive city clusters hold a stronger attraction for Chinese MNEs than developed market MNEs. Research limitations/implications The authors discuss how the research contributes to the debate on emerging market MNE catch-up theory, as well as that on sub-national city location choice, by highlighting the growing importance of sub-national geography to understanding strategic asset seeking related greenfield FDI. Practical implications Sub-national city location choice is an important driver of strategic asset seeking FDI for Chinese MNEs, one that both national and local city level policymakers should pay attention to. Social implications Chinese FDI via aggressive mergers and acquisitions to acquire key technologies has been restricted in recent years. Policymakers must consider whether they may also wish to restrict Chinese greenfield FDI in R&D-related projects, which now exhibit a pronounced upward trend. Originality/value The authors highlight the growing importance of sub-national geography to understanding strategic asset seeking related greenfield FDI in Chinese MNEs (and how it plays, more generally, a central role in their strategies).

Improving the quality of foreign investment to help functional upgrading of the value chain is an important starting point for China’s manufacturing industry to achieve low-carbon and high-quality development. Based on the data of the functional activities of each manufacturing greenfield investment project in China from 2003 to 2018, this paper constructs specialization index of the upstream and downstream functional division of labor of value chains, and theoretically explains and empirically tests the impact and mechanism of the functional upgrading of the value chain driven by the improvement of foreign investment quality on the embodied emissions in China’s export trade. The results show that the functional upgrading of the value chain can significantly reduce the embodied emissions in China’s export trade. The mechanism analysis shows that the functional upgrading of the value chain driven by the improvement of the quality of foreign investment mainly plays a role in reducing the embodied emissions in China’s export trade through the optimization effect of factor structure, the effect of human capital accumulation and the effect of service demand creation. Extended analysis finds that high-quality foreign investment engaged in upstream functional activities and inflows into eastern China have more obvious inhibitory effects on the embodied emissions in export trade. At the same time, the functional upgrading of the value chain is more conducive to reducing the embodied emissions in export trade in pollution-intensive manufacturing industries. This paper verifies the “pollution halo” effect of high-quality foreign investment, and provides strong support for China to attract and utilize foreign investment more vigorously and promote high-level opening up under the new situation.