Nation-States and the Multinational Corporation: A Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment. By Nathan M. Jensen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 224p. $35.00.

The dramatic increase in flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) during the last two decades of the twentieth century has been accompanied by an extensive literature dealing with the impact of multinational corporations (MNCs) on issues such as economic growth, poverty and inequality, the environment, and cultural diversity. As many of the concerns about these impacts, positive as well as negative, revolve around the question of markedly increased competition among states for MNCs, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to the political and economic factors that attract FDI.