Intensity of foreign investment promotion and development levels in Central–Eastern European regions

What is it about?

In recent decades investment promotion gained popularity amongst different levels of government and academics alike. Yet its relationship with broader regional development remains unclear and is rarely investigated. In an attempt to remedy this, the paper brings together place marketing and regional development concepts to explore investment attraction approaches in the Czech, Polish and Slovak regions. The paper identifies elements of best practice and investigates to what extent these have been implemented in FDI promotion conducted by regional authorities in the three countries after their accession to the EU. A set of organisation~ and implementation-related factors are examined. The discussion is based on an original survey of regional authorities' FDI promotion. First, the paper develops a measurement of regional authorities’ engagement in investment promotion then establishes the socio-economic conditions affecting it. The analysis provides insights into the relationship between regional development and investment attraction - the main theoretical contribution of the paper. Diverse levels of engagement in promotion are not influenced by the macro-factors of GDP growth rates or FDI stock. Instead, it is conditioned by the regional labour market conditions prevailing in the countries studied.

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