Foreign direct investment and institutional co-evolution in Ireland

Ireland was one of the first countries in the world to adopt an FDI-oriented development strategy. It remains to this day the most FDI-intensive economy in Europe. These factors have helped configure the institutional structure of the economy to be able to respond rapidly to changes in the nature and requirements of the type of global FDI that an economy with Ireland’s advantages (and disadvantages) could reasonably hope to attract. This paper analyses the changing characteristics of European-bound FDI since the 1960s and the co-evolution of Irish development strategy.