Multinationals and foreign direct investment: the Portuguese experience (1900-2010)

This paper reviews the evolution of inward and outward FDI in Portugal over more than one century. This long term perspective provides an overview of the Portuguese economy in different phases of the world markets integration since the immediate pre-WWI period to the contemporary global economy, moving through the interwar period of neo-mercantilism and witnessing the slow revival of the world economy after WWII. The domestic economic and institutional experience has been at least so diverse as the global context: Portugal moved from a developing to an advanced economy, facing several economic and financial crises, different institutional and political environments more or less conducive to the integration in the world economy. Four issues are especially emphasized: the analysis of the so-called autarchic phase during the Estado Novo period; the role of FDI during the period of the most intense growth of the Portuguese economy (1960s and early 1970s); the entry strategies followed by foreign MNEs during a period of structural transformation in the volume of FDI inflows (1960s-1970s); the reasons for the surge in outward FDI after the late 1990s.