Productivity Commission Evidence Session: Examining the Role of International Investment

As a medium-sized open economy, the UK depends more on trade and international investment than a number of other OECD advanced economies.  This Productivity Commission evidence session examines the role of international investment in raising productivity. Specifically, it explores the relationship between international investment and productivity growth, in particular recent trends in Foreign Direct Investment and the UK’s poor productivity performance.

The session comprised our Commissioners questioning our three witnesses on topics such as sizing international investment, the make-up of international investment, the new global trade landscape and how international investment could be improved.

Our Witnesses

Davide Castellani is a Professor of International Business and Strategy at the Henley Business School, University of Reading. Having been published extensively in top-ranked international journals, his research focuses on the determinants of firms’ internationalisation choices, and their impact on innovation, technology and economic performances of firms, regions and countries.

Riccardo Crescenzi is a Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has been a European Research Council (ERC) grant holder, leading a major five-year research project on foreign direct investment (FDI), global value chains (GVCs) and their territorial impacts across the globe. Riccardo is currently the LSE Principal Investigator of a large collaborative research project funded by Horizon Europe and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) on inequalities in the era of global megatrends.

Reza Moghadam is Chief Economic Advisor at Millennium Capital Partners LLP. Prior to joining Millennium Reza served for 22 years at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), spending much of his career as a key IMF crisis manager. Christine Lagarde appointed Reza to head the IMF’s European Department during the Eurozone crisis, where he was responsible for leading the IMF’s response to the crisis and acting as the interlocutor with European policymakers from 2011 to 2014. Before this, Reza helped spearhead the IMF’s response to the Global Financial Crisis, having been asked to head the Strategy, Policy and Review Department by Dominique Strauss-Khan.