Outward Foreign Direct Investments and Emerging Multinational Companies from Central and Eastern Europe The Case of Visegrad Countries

This paper summarizes a research project devoted to analyzing the development of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and emerging multinational companies from Visegrad countries: The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. After several years of foreign direct investment inflows to central and eastern European countries in recent decades, OFDI has appeared and grown dynamically from these economies. The Visegrad countries are among the leaders in that respect. This type of internationalization is affecting mainly Visegrad neighboring countries and other countries in the region. The concentration of investing companies and transactions is quite high in all four countries, and this determines both the sector and target country composition of OFDI. Intra-Visegrad investments, mainly by pairs of countries, are especially significant.