Political economics of investment incentives

The paper focuses on selective investment incentives, which are aimed primarily to attract foreign direct investment, in the context of the new EU Member States, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. We discuss the issue within three closely related dimensions. We point to a potential conflict of interests between host country governments and multinational companies in promoting technology spillovers from foreign direct investment in the host economies. We examine the prisoner dilemma of the host governments in mutual competition for mobile direct investment and a room to achieve multilateral or strengthening regional agreement on investment to reduce a possible wealth reducing content of such policies. Finally, we discuss national context of the investment incentives with regards to the rent-seeking behaviour of various interest groups and contradictory role of the investment promotion agency in the process of decision-making about investment promotion policies. We conclude with brief implications for development policy.