Creating jobs at home by investing overseas – a counterintuitive truth

Firms with direct investment in other countries create jobs at home. This is a counterintuitive fact that defies political thinking, especially in these rapidly changing times of populism and cries against global economic integration. Riccardo Crescenzi, Roberto Ganau, and Michael Storper study the number of jobs new foreign direct investment by domestic companies creates abroad, in comparison with local employment levels. They find a positive effect on domestic local employment, with a potential downside: intra-regional inequalities.