Abstract
A rich volume of literature has analysed country investment attractiveness in a wide range of contexts. The research has mostly focused on traditional economic concepts—economic, social, managerial, governmental, and geopolitical determinants—with a lack of focus on the smartness approach. Smartness is a social construct, which means that it has no objective presence but is “defined into existence”. It cannot be touched or measured based on uniform criteria but, rather, on the ones that are collectively agreed upon and stem from the nature of definition. Key determinants of smartness learning—intelligence, agility, networking, digital, sustainability, innovativeness and knowledgeability—serve as a platform for the deeper analysis of the research problem. In this article, we assessed country investment attractiveness through the economic subjects’ competences and environment empowering them to attract and maintain investments in the country. The country investment attractiveness was assessed by artificial intelligence (in particular, neural networks), which has found widespread application in the sciences and engineering but has remained rather limited in economics and confined to specific areas like counties’ investment attractiveness. The empirical research relies on the case of assessing investment attractiveness of 29 European countries by the use of 58 indicators and 31,958 observations of annual data of the 2000–2018 time period. The advantages and limitations of the use of artificial intelligence in assessing countries’ investment attractiveness proved the need for soft competences for work with artificial intelligence and decision-making based on the information gathered by such research. The creativity, intelligence, agility, networking, sustainability, social responsibility, innovativeness, digitality, learning, curiosity and being knowledge-driven are the competences that, together, are needed in all stages of economic analysis.
Highlights
Globalisation, the fourth industrial revolution, a rapidly changing environment, and consumer needs lead to increasing competition among companies
The aim of this paper is to define the countries’ investment attractiveness under the approach of smartness and identify the key competences that are important for work with artificial intelligence and decision-making based on the information gathered by such research
We suggest that smart social systems be dynamically adaptive to new circumstances, innovative and knowledge-driven, strategically minded, internetworked, and learn and effectively exploit the opportunities offered by the new trends in order to achieve the preferred development objectives [71,81]
Summary
Globalisation, the fourth industrial revolution, a rapidly changing environment, and consumer needs lead to increasing competition among companies. They compete for ideas, products or services, consumers, employees, technologies, projects, markets, and so on. Foreign direct investment is one of the means to enhance a company’s competitiveness and the well-being of the whole country. Companies in countries attracting more foreign direct investment are characterised by higher levels of competitiveness, innovation, and technological development [1,2]. Countries themselves contribute to the increase of companies’ competitiveness, sustainable economic development, attraction of knowledge, technologies and innovation, creation of infrastructure, and emergence of related and service-based businesses [3]. Countries, which are able to maintain and model future foreign direct investment, can more accurately plan their budgets, form strategic development paths, and diversify and more effectively manage the risks and adverse effects relating to investment exit
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