An assessment of the Estonian investment climate: Results of a survey of foreign investors and policy implications

Credible economic reform has played a key role in Estonia’s success in attracting significant amounts of foreign direct investment. This paper analyzes two years of data from a survey of foreign investors in Estonia to determine the major motivations to invest and the greatest problems faced by investors. Results indicate that the labour force and market-related factors are the primary motivations for investors coming to Estonia, while bureaucracy, corruption, and labour quality are the greatest problems. Ordered probit analysis of the factor rankings supports previous findings that investor characteristics such as export orientation, mode of entry, or industry can explain factor evaluation for some, but not all, factors. This method can be used by policy makers to identify whether certain types of investors are likely to be affected differently by the host country investment climate.