Urban Circular Policies and Employment through Greenfield FDI

This paper examines the association between circular strategies imposed by European cities on the attraction of greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) and the creation of circular gross employment through greenfield FDI. We utilise a recently developed database of circular strategies employed by local authorities in 43 European cities with information on greenfield FDI in these cities and other city characteristics for the years 2016–2017. We find that urban circular policies are positively and significantly associated with the attraction of greenfield FDI–generated employment, where the effect is stronger for regulatory and economic instruments compared to soft instruments.