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The book considers the determinants of the regional distribution of foreign manufacturing investment in the UK. The core theme of the book is that foreign firms coming to the UK seek in their location decision to minimise their costs of production. This minimisation of production costs is constrained by the need to ensure that they are adjacent to their key markets, whether these be in the UK or wider EC.

This article examines the relationship between the gross and net employment outcomes from the largest EU structural funding programme in the UK, the Objective 1 West Wales and the Valleys programme. The article demonstrates the practical difficulties of moving from gross to net outputs. It is suggested that these difficulties are not always explicitly considered in EU programme evaluations. One result is that, in the UK at least, previous evaluations of the relationship between gross and net employment outcomes may have overestimated the additionality of the European structural funding element.

"Dieser Aufsatz analysiert die regionale Verteilung der Direktinvestierungen (FDI) des Auslands im Vereinigten Königreich. Nach einer Untersuchung derjenigen Landesregionen, die sich auf dem Gebiet eingehender Investierungen erfolgreich erwiesen haben, beschäftigt der Aufsatz sich mit Hypothesen, die zur Erklärung des auf regionaler Ebene verhältnismässigen Erfolgs bei der Heranziehung neuer FDI Projekte und Arbeitsplätze benutzt werden können. Empirische Prüfungen dieser Hypothesen legen nahe, daß sowohl finanzielle Anreize wie Zugang zu Märkten wichtige Bestimmungsfaktoren bei der regionalen Verteilung neuer FDI Projekte und Arbeitsplätze sind." (Autorenreferat)

Across the United Kingdom public (and private) resources have been targeted on improving broadband infrastructure. While this has served to provide new opportunities for households and firms, there has been some debate around the ability of firms to take full advantage of the opportunities that arise through this evolving infrastructure. In this respect, there has been particular debate on how far small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have taken up the challenge of effectively engaging with the resource. Drawing on the case of Wales, this paper explores the digital maturity of a sample of Welsh SMEs. The paper provides evidence of how far SMEs are successfully engaging with the new opportunities available through broadband, and develops a typology of firms according to their engagement. The paper then explores how these differences produce policy implications.

AbstractThe institutional landscape for promoting regions for foreign inward investment continues to evolve across all nations. In the UK the abandonment of regional development agencies has led to years of institutional flux and uncertainty. One nation in the UK, Wales has seen the most dramatic changes in structure. The Welsh Development Agency was arguably one of the most successful in the world but was abolished in 2006 and has seen no direct replacment. This paper carries out a qualitative investigation over a 6 year period analyzing stages in the process of promoting of region. The paper examines how the loss of a strong coordinating marketing agency, and an evolving multi‐agency approach creates problems. The paper also explores whether the framework of organisational fields developed in organisation theory might provide a means of understanding how the evolving multi‐agency approach to inward investment attraction can be highly problematic. The findings have implications applicable for any region promoting itself for inward investment.