Foreign Direct Investment and Science and Technology Infrastructure in Small Countries: Evidence from Finland and the Netherlands

This study investigates the links between foreign firms and the public Science and Technology (S&T) institutions in Finland and the Netherlands. By estimating models on data from Community Innovation Surveys, we find for the Netherlands that foreign firms reveal a significantly lower probability to cooperate with domestic S&T institutions than domestic firms, which can be expected a priori. In Finland this negative bias is not present due to Finnish innovation policies in which R&D collaboration is an explicit requirement. If innovating foreign firms in the Netherlands produce innovations based on ideas originating in the firm, they do not co-operate with domestic S&T institutions while in Finland these co-operation schemes do exist. Finnish S&T institutions fit in the R&D strategies of MNEs while S&T institutions in the Netherlands do not.