The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment : Swedish Flows of FDI into Eastern and Western Europe

Abstract: This thesis investigates the determinants of Swedish foreign direct investments to 24 European countries during the period 1998 to 2008 with 2000 and 2008 as sample years. The thesis emphasizes five factors that affect the Swedish FDI flows to these countries, which are grouped into OECD countries and CEE countries (Central and Eastern European Countries). The explanatory variables studied are economic growth, property rights, labor cost and two dummy variables with one targeting whether the country is culturally affiliated with Sweden and the other is dealing with whether that country is an OECD country or not. We use multiple regressions to find out to what extent each of these variables can explain the variance of FDI during the years 2000 and 2008. The coefficient estimates show the expected sign in the relationship between FDI and the various explanatory variables, with the exception of labor cost but only OECD membership shows a significant relationship to FDI (and only when using 2000 data).