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ABSTRACT  Despite the growing importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Mexican economy, statistical evidence on the determinants of the regional distribution of foreign‐owned firms is seriously limited. In this paper, empirical findings are presented from a variety of econometric models that identify several regional characteristics influencing the locational choice of FDI. The main findings are threefold. First, several locational factors appear to be potentially important; these include regional demand, wages, schooling, infrastructure, and agglomeration economies. Second, the effect of agglomeration economies stems from several sources. In particular, the regional presence of agglomerations of manufacturing activity and of foreign‐owned manufacturing firms both have an independent positive effect on the locational decision of new FDI. Third, the locational process of maquiladora firms differs from the locational process of overall FDI. The actual findings suggest that regional demand and infrastructure, as suggested above, are not important locational factors for export‐oriented firms. Furthermore, whereas agglomeration economies from manufacturing and the presence of existing FDI attract new maquiladora investment, the presence of a regional agglomeration of services deters the location of new maquiladora firms. Finally, agglomeration economies appear to be more important in the locational process of maquiladora firms.

Recent empirical research on externalities from foreign direct investment (FDI) is engaged with the identification of externalities along the dimensions of industry and geographical space. In this paper I explore these externality dimensions in the context of estimating FDI externalities in regional Mexican manufacturing industries. The main findings indicate that the presence of FDI creates a variety of externality effects. Intraregional foreign participation creates negative intraindustry and positive interindustry externalities. Furthermore, the estimations identify negative intraindustry externalities across regions and positive spatial interindustry FDI externalities. In addition, the estimations identify three different regional characteristics that have a negative or positive effect on spatial externalities from FDI.

Recent research on productivity spillovers from affiliates of multinational corporations in developing and emerging economies finds that backward linkages from affiliates of foreign-owned firms to local suppliers constitute the main channel transmitting productivity spillovers. This finding has important policy implications, given that host economy governments often spend considerable resources on attracting multinational corporation investments and promoting their impact on technological development and economic growth. This paper conducts a new and comprehensive survey of recent empirical studies that focus on the drivers and impacts of backward linkages between multinational corporation affiliates and their local suppliers. The literature survey reveals that several characteristics of multinational corporation affiliates and domestic firms, host economy conditions, and various mediating factors influence the level of use of local suppliers, the nature and degree of technology dissemination, and the materialization of productivity spillovers among domestic firms. These findings are used to identify the main areas where policy making can be effective. The paper discusses various types of soft or light-handed industrial policies that host economy governments can design and implement to foster the extent of linkages between multinational corporations and local suppliers, facilitate technology dissemination, and enhance productivity spillovers among domestic firms.

A latent class model is applied to allow entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) to influence the effect of entrepreneurial activity on growth in European Union regions. Using this methodology, clusters of regions that differ significantly in their relationship between entrepreneurial activity and growth are identified. This is consistent with the hypothesis that EEs affect this relationship. Subsequently, cluster membership is related to regional characteristics representing a range of components of EEs and marked differences in a variety of these regional characteristics are found. Taken together, the results support the notion that EEs help shape the impact of entrepreneurial activity on growth.