Book excerpt: This collection of papers from the NIESR conference at the British Academy identifies the channels through which inward investment can affect host economies, and provides quantitative evidence on the extent to which inward investment has acted to shape the size and structure of industrialised economies over the last decade. Leading authors in the fields of international investment and the behaviour of national and multinational firms combine innovative methodologies and firm-level data to enable empirical evaluation of the impact of inward investment. Detailed studies of aspects of inward investment in the UK are put into context through a review of existing literature and by comparison of UK developments to those experienced by French, Italian, German and US economies.