Is foreign direct investment attracted to ‘knowledge creators’?

The effect of ‘knowledge creators’ on location patterns of new foreign plants entering the USA from 1986 to 1993 is analysed. The empirical results from a conditional logit model suggest a link exists between knowledge bases, measured by patent counts, and the location decisions of foreign plants. In the limit, these results imply that a 1% increase in patent counts is associated with an increase in the probability of attracting a new foreign plant by as much as 1.874%.