Foreign Direct Investment in a Process of Economic Integration: The Case of Spanish Manufacturing, 1986-1992

In this paper we analyze the main characteristic features of foreign direct investment (FDI) directed to Spanish manufacturing, both across industries and through time, for the years 1986-1992. During this period, Spain was one of the most important recipients of FDI inflows in the world, coinciding with the first years of integration into the European Union and the prospects about the completion of the Single European Market by 1992. To this end, a relative FDI measure is related to several industry indicators, as well as to some macroeconomic variables, which allows us to obtain a general characterization of FDI in Spanish manufacturing over that period.