Factors Favoring Greece’s Inward Foreign Direct Investment in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis: An Exploratory Survey

Abstract

Greece has suffered the worst from the late 2000s global financial crisis. Despite the completion of the economic adjustment program the rate of recovery in Greece is still weak. The liquidity constraints in the Greek economy imply that the investment shock, which will accelerate its recovery rate, will be an outcome of investment inflows by privatizations and/or other opportunities arising to foreign investors (inward FDI) due to the devaluation of the assets in Greece caused by the crisis. However, the level of attracted by the Greek economy has always been well below the European Union average. This paper investigates the factors favoring inward FDI in Greece after the crisis. A survey is made by the use of a questionnaire for the collection of primary data on the activity of multinationals in Greece and non-parametric methods are used for investigating the attractiveness of the Greek market and the decision to invest.

Keywords:

• Economic crisis
• FDI
• Greece
• multinationals

Additional information

Funding

This paper is part of a research project titled “An Investigation of FDI Deterrents in Greece for the Formulation of a Realistic Reform Framework to Restart the Economy”. The project is co-funded by Greece and the European Union (European Social Fund) through the Operational Program “Human Resources Development, Education and Life Lifelong Learning 2014–2020”.