This paper examines the main factors that attract inbound foreign direct investment (FDI) at the UK regional level, using econometric data from five sample UK regions (the South East, West Midlands, North West, Wales and Scotland) broadly representing the country's regional economic divide. The findings indicate that regional and national (but not EU-level) factors, linked to several underlying strategic determinants help determine the regional distribution of inbound FDI, and its inter-regional variation. The paper concludes that governmental policymakers at the national and regional levels can have an important role to play in drawing targeted FDI inflows to the UK regions.

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The institutional influence, specifically trade unions, on the job insecurity of workers in Foreign-owned Enterprises (FoEs) has been generally overlooked. This study uses national representative private sector data to examine firm's layoff incident and the number of staff made redundant in response to the recent 2008-2012 recession in the UK. Our probit regression and the Negative-Binomial regression show that overall FoEs appear to be more likely to undertake redundancy and to lay off more workers than Domestically-owned Enterprises. However, the strength of trade unionism, measured by union membership density, has a moderating effect in the incident of redundancies controlling for the adverse impact of the recession on companies studied and a wide range of industrial and firm characteristics. Furthermore, FoEs' headquarter location seems to have no effect on the propensity of layoff or quantity of layoff in the UK.

This paper extends the analysis of foreign direct investment (FDI) location in the UK by exploring the determinants of manufacturing and non‐manufacturing inbound FDI location within and between the UK's core (the Southeast) and non‐core (West Midlands; Wales; Scotland and the Northwest) regions. Use is made of multiple regression techniques to analyse a set of official, longitudinal data gathered for the period from 1980 to 2005 as a means to this end. The findings offer new insights into the relative influence of regional, national and EU level factors and government policy over FDI location at the UK regional level, and into their variation between regions and sectors of industry. The resultant implications for government policies towards inbound FDI are also considered, including the desirability of allowing them to vary from region to region, if FDI inflows are to be maximised.

Using data of 1992-2012, this paper considers the spillover effects resulting from the increased flow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the English Premier League focusing, in particular, on competitive balance, measures of football productivity and intrafootball spillovers. Results indicate that not only has the competitive balance in football been reduced but that overseas investment has impacted both upon the productivity of the clubs under foreign ownership and those which continue under domestic ownership. The empirical contribution of this paper indicates the relevance and importance of both spillover and FDI theory to that of the football industry. IntroductionMultinational Enterprises' (MNEs) activity and the process of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) have been an important part of the globalized world. 1 MNEs bring with them knowledge (embodied in both goods and services), fill savings gaps, create jobs, improve technology, increase the quantity and the quality of capital and add to competition in domestic markets. 2,3 The entry of MNEs can lead to spill over effects having a concomitant impact on efficiency gains for local economy firms particularly where MNEs cannot internalize the full value of these benefits 4 and these can occur both within the sector and within other industries through three channels, demonstration effects, competition effects and the mobility of workers. These spillover effects are themselves influenced by industrial structure, overall economy size and technological capability. The nature of any spillovers will also be affected by the type of the FDI and whether the investment is based upon full or minority ownership. 5 As to spillover effects in general, they have been argued to be positive in nature, 6 nonetheless, some consider the overall impact to be neutral, 7 while others have argued that any spill over effects have a negative impact on domestic firms. 8,9 In particular, FDI can affect the competitive balance within an industry/sector, as the foreign entrant may have distinct financial and ownership advantages disturbing both the competitive nature of the market either in the short run or long run. 10,11 The focus of this paper, however, is on the spillover effects resulting from FDI in the English Premier League (EPL). This can impact upon the competitive balance through the process of productivity and knowledge and other related spillovers and can be seen both on domestically owned clubs and football-related industries (intra-industry). To our knowledge, the extant literature and theory of both FDI and spillovers has not been applied to the football sector.