LABFDI

Title
Labour Market Effects of European Foreign Direct Investments (LABFDI)
"Improving the Human Research Potential and the Socio-economic Knowledge Base" Specific Programme

Coordinator
Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano

Keywords
foreign direct investment
multinational corporations
labour market

Research outline and main results
The central goal of this project has been to examine the labour market effects of European outward and inward Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), focussing on five European countries: Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Spain.
Research has developed an analytical framework accounting for all the various links between FDI and the labour market. It has analysed empirically the sectoral and geographical distribution of European FDIs and has derived implicit labour demands. The impact of inward and outward FDIs on host and home economies has been analysed using cross-country firm level panel data. A considerable effort has been made in constructing comparable harmonised firm level panel data bases for the sample countries. It has been possible to control for firm specific factors, like the type of technology used by the firm, the skill structure of employment, the organisation of production and for issues concerning the geographic localisation of the investment.
The final goal of this work has been to evaluate policies at a national and European level which may enhance the positive effects of foreign investments on domestic employment. This included the assessment of a wide range of policy tools: science and technology policy, employment policy, labour market regulations, foreign investment and competition policies and finally trade policy.

Research centres involved in the project
Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, Turin and Milan (http://www.dagliano.unimi.it/)
Centre for Economic Policy Research, London (CEPR) (http://www.cepr.org/)
CESPRI-Bocconi University, Milan (http://www.kites.unibocconi.it)
Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Stockholm (IUI) (http://www.iui.se/)
Universidad Carlos III, Madrid (http://www.uc3m.es/)
University College Dublin (http://www.ucd.ie/)
University of Nottingham (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/)

Last updated May 13, 2009

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