Foreign Multinationals and Domestic Firms: Empirical Evidence for the United Kingdom

During the 1980s, as in previous decades, the United Kingdom attracted a much larger share of FDI than did the other European countries. Thanks to an industrial policy which did not discriminate against foreign firms, to vigorous action taken by the state to curb trade-union power, ¹ and to the incentives provided for new FDI in the depressed areas of the country, Great Britain managed to consolidate its traditional locational advantages for European investments made by MNEs from every part of the world.