Intellectual Property Rights and Foreign Direct Investment: The Role of Industry and Host-Country Characteristics

The paper aims at overcoming several shortcomings of previous empirical studies on the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and foreign direct investment (FDI). The authors first analyze FDI on a sectorally and regionally disaggregated level, and then address the proposition that stronger IPR protection raises not only the quantity, but also the quality of FDI.