ABSTRACT
The fortunes of local and regional economies are crucially dependent upon their abilities to attract and embed exogenous resources. In practice, this has often meant attempts to attract the investment of transnational corporations and to exploit their potential benefits for local and regional economies. This chapter describes the growth of the TNCs and their changing form, especially the emergence of global production networks and the policies and instruments seeking to attract and embed FDI for local and regional development. It also charts the more recent concern with attracting particular occupational groups and ‘creative professionals’. The decisions of TNCs to invest, reinvest or divest, and the phenomenon of territorial competition, have the power to shape local and regional development and to determine geographical patterns of prosperity and disadvantage.
