We relate the technological and factor price determinants of inward and outward FDI to its potential productivity and labour market effects on both host and home economies. This allows us to distinguish clearly between technology sourcing and technology exploiting FDI, and to identify FDI which is linked to labour cost differentials. We then empirically examine the effects of different types of FDI into and out of the United Kingdom on domestic (i.e. UK) productivity and on the demand for skilled and unskilled labour at the industry level. Inward investment into the UK comes overwhelmingly from sectors and countries which have a technological advantage over the corresponding UK sector. Outward FDI shows a quite different pattern, dominated by investment into foreign sectors which have lower unit labour costs than the UK. We find that different types of FDI have markedly different productivity and labour demand effects, which may in part explain the lack of consensus in the empirical literature on the effects of FDI. Our results also highlight the difficulty for policy makers of simultaneously improving employment and domestic productivity through FDI.ud
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机译：我们将内向外国直接投资的技术和要素价格决定因素与其对东道国和本国经济的潜在生产率和劳动力市场影响联系起来。这使我们能够清楚地区分技术来源和利用外国直接投资的技术，并确定与劳动力成本差异有关的外国直接投资。然后，我们以经验的方式考察流入和流出联合王国的不同类型的外国直接投资对国内（即英国）生产率以及行业水平上对熟练和非熟练劳动力的需求的影响。对英国的内向投资绝大多数来自比相应的英国部门具有技术优势的部门和国家。对外直接投资呈现出截然不同的模式，主要是对外国部门的投资，外国部门的单位劳动力成本低于英国。我们发现，不同类型的外国直接投资对生产率和劳动力需求的影响显着不同，这可能部分解释了经验文献中对外国直接投资的影响缺乏共识。我们的结果还凸显了政策制定者难以通过外国直接投资同时改善就业和国内生产率。 ud
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