Attracting Chinese Foreign Direct Investment to Small, Developed Economies: The Case of Ireland

The authors present a multilevel, in-depth analysis of Chinese investment in Ireland using semi-structured interviews and case studies. Their findings suggest that while Chinese FDI can be explained to an extent through classical theories of FDI, such investment is unconventional in many regards and thus requires the extension of established theories. The authors also find that factors above and beyond those that apply to traditional sources of investment are at play in the case of China, including the presence of host-country clusters, the strength of intergovernmental relations, and the degree of alignment between China's development priorities and the host.

This piece originally appeared as Collison, Phoebe, Louis Brennan, and Ruth Rios-Morales. “Attracting Chinese Foreign Direct Investment to Small, Developed Economies: The Case of Ireland,” Thunderbird International Business Review, Vol. 59, no. 3 (2017), pp. 401-419.