| Abstract [eng] |
Every country strives to attract foreign direct investment, which helps create new jobs, develop new technologies, and enhance employee competencies and productivity. However, it is difficult to identify the factors that help each country attract foreign direct investment. The factors influencing foreign direct investments can also change. They may be influenced by, for example, changing geopolitical contexts or environmental policies. This research aims to find causal relationships and factors determining the attractiveness of European Union countries to foreign direct investment, using the temporal causal discovery framework. Correlation indicates that there is a relationship between variables but does not explain it. Causality indicates the direction of the relationship, the dependence of one variable on another [17]. The Temporal Causal Discovery Framework method (TCDF), introduced in 2019, is used in this research. This method uses convolutional neural networks and attention scores to find causal relationships between variables. The method finds direct, indirect, and intrinsic causality, and can identify confounders [17]. Also, we examined the scientific literature related to a country's attractiveness to foreign direct investments. Factors and indicators mentioned in the scientific literature that influence foreign direct investments were identified. It was familiarized with various methods for identifying causal relationships. Moreover, it was discussed in more detail the temporal causal discovery framework and standard pairwise Granger method. During the research, data were collected from various sources for Ireland, Denmark, Spain, Lithuania, and Germany. The countries represent European Union countries, divided according to social (state) welfare models. Data were collected for the period 1986-2022. The study examined how factors influencing foreign direct investments changed during the periods 1986-2003 and 2004- 2022. It was also compared which factors influence foreign direct investments in each country. It was determined that there are nonlinear causality relationships between factors influencing foreign direct investments and foreign direct investments themselves. It was also identified that the factors changed during these periods. Examining countries individually, a causal relationship is found between foreign direct investments and trade (% of GDP). This relationship persists across different periods. |
