The long-run relationship, the lasting interest, the control aspect, and the transfer of assets related to foreign direct investments are generally assumed to create distinctive economic consequences for the host economies. In the public debate, multinational enterprises often seem to be perceived either as highly beneficial or as obstacles to prosperous development, probably because there are truly two sides to foreign direct investments. On the one hand, genuine competencies often constitute owner-specific advantages of multinational enterprises and these competencies might be expected to spill over to the host economies. On the other hand, the factors promoting foreign direct investments also create industry entry barriers and it is empirically well established that there is a positive correlation between foreign ownership and the concentration level in a sector. In this thesis various host country effects are studied from different angles.
The thesis is organized as follows: Essay 1 gives a brief introduction to Dunning's eclectic paradigm and shows how a broad range of theories can be sorted and understood in relation to the constituting parts of the paradigm. Furthermore, these different theoretical contributions serve as a background for a general discussion of host country effects. Essay 2 focuses on location advantages, development in foreign direct investments, and some possible host country effects in Norway. Essay 3 provides a survey of the empirical literature on externalities related to foreign direct investments. Essay 4 contains an econometric analysis of productivity growth and possible spillover effects regarding foreign takeovers in the Norwegian manufacturing industry with ownership advantages as the focal point. Finally, internalization advantages are at the centre of attention in Essay 5. The research question—whether there are any patterns in takeovers that are followed by closures of the acquired plants—is analysed using data of Swedish multinational enterprises’ foreign direct investments in OECD countries.
