Innovation behaviour and productivity performance in the nordic region does foreign ownership matter?

This paper addresses the involvement of foreign companies in domestic economies; the relative engagement of foreign-owned companies in R&D-activities; the relative embeddedness in various national innovation systems and the relative output performance from R&D and innovation. A comparison is made between the innovation and productivity of foreign owned enterprises, of different corporate styles, (Nordic, Anglo-Saxon and Continental European) and the different corporate structures of domestically owned firms (multinational and uninational). Using 5 186 firm level observations from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and based on the international harmonized Community Innovation Survey and uniform econometric approaches; the study confirms previous findings, presents new results and identifies country, corporate style and corporate governance differences. Some new lights is also shed on a seemingly paradoxical relationship between R&D and innovation, and between R&D and productivity.