Amazon’s HQ2 Site Selection Criteria: The New ‘Gold Standard’ in FDI Decision-Making

Alfried Braumann
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Alfried Braumann: Economic Policy and EU-Affairs Executive Department, Vienna Business Agency, Austria / Urban and Regional Research, TU Wien, Austria

Urban Planning, 2020, vol. 5, issue 3, 403-417

Abstract: In 2017–2018, Seattle-based Tech behemoth Amazon executed a highly publicised location-finding process for a $5 billion investment project, dubbed ‘HQ2’. Owing to the combination of high investment volume and the company’s unique public exposure, the HQ2 process is on course to becoming a basic yardstick for future foreign direct investment (FDI) projects all over the world. This article compiles the company’s previously unpublished site selection criteria and develops an evidence-based system of investment decision arguments which is employed to test the currently dominant approaches in location decision theory—behavioural, neoclassical, and institutional. Our results identify gaps vis-à-vis this emerging ‘Gold Standard’ and we propose the addition of a fourth, project-oriented approach to theory to fill the detected shortcomings. Furthermore, this system equips policymakers with a tool to evaluate their investment attraction strategies based on the decision criteria extracted from the HQ2 process.

Keywords: Amazon; economic policy; foreign direct investment; HQ2; impact assessment; local economic development; location decision; policy; urban development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:urbpla:v5:y:2020:i:3:p:403-417

DOI: 10.17645/up.v5i3.3207

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