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El proceso de internacionalización de la empresa vía inversión directa extranjera (IDE) obedece a una decisión individual y, como tal, ha sido generalmente analizada desde una perspectiva microeconómica que justifica la emergencia de empresas multinacionales (EMN) en la existencia de determinadas ventajas de propiedad. Los condicionantes de país, por su parte, han intervenido fundamentalmente en la explicación de los factores determinantes de la localización de la IDE. Sin embargo, aún es escasa la evidencia empírica disponible que emana del análisis de los factores determinantes de la emisión de IDE en el plano agregado, aspecto al que se dedica este trabajo. La reciente emergencia de EMN en países en desarrollo acentúa aún más la importancia de analizar tales factores y su relación con la relevancia de las ventajas de propiedad. En este artículo se utiliza una muestra integrada por 48 países, incluyendo tanto economías desarrolladas como en desarrollo. Los resultados permiten afirmar la existencia de un conjunto de factores que desde una perspectiva macro condicionan el proceso de acumulación de capacidades que influye positivamente en las salidas de inversión, y que éstos difieren entre los dos grupos de países estudiados., The internationalization process of firms through foreign direct investment (FDI) responds to an individual decision, and for that reason much of the analysis on this has been done at the microeconomic level, revealing that the presence of certain ownership advantages would justify the emergence of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). The country level’ constraints have been mostly considered in studies covering the decisions related to FDI locations. However, there is still little evidence of the outward FDI determinants at the aggregate level; this is precisely the focus of this paper. The recent emergence of multinational firms in developing countries makes even more interesting the analysis of these factors and how they relate to ownership advantages explaining outward FDI. Our analysis uses a sample integrated by 48 countries, including both developed and developing economies. Results show that a set of macroeconomic factors affect the cumulative process of capabilities accumulation that derives into outward investments, but this set of factors differs between the two groups of countries studied

Following an increasing body of literature that has been generated regarding the role played by Knowledge Intensive Services in economic systems, our approach focuses on KIS international orientation (FDI) according to the attractiveness we expect Regional Innovation Systems might have in these flows. Results suggest that technological variables participate rather marginally in the process of FDI attraction. As this situation unfolds more relevantly in the case of Outward investment than Inward, we can therefore expect that Spanish investment abroad is more oriented towards asset and knowledge seeking than the inflow of investments in services and in KIS in Spanish regions.