Business Investment in NI: The aim of this research project is to address this gap in knowledge to better understand investment at the firm level, including the type, scale and motivation for business investment and to understand more about the financial health of firms and how investment is financed.

Capital investment is widely recognised as a crucial driver of economic growth, with strong evidence linking higher business investment to increased productivity. Northern Ireland (NI) has been seen as a ‘converging’ region within the UK, where, despite initially lagging behind the UK average in terms of investment, it has experienced above-average growth in this area over the past two decades. Despite this, the rise in investment has not been matched by a proportional increase in productivity.
The financial health of companies is closely linked to their investment strategies, with firms choosing to finance investments through internal, external, or mixed sources. Prior research shows that internal resources play a significant role in business investment, especially for Small and Mediumsized Enterprises (SMEs), who face additional challenges in accessing external finance. Despite business investment being fundamentally an individual business decision, however, there has been little research undertaken in NI at the firm level to understand business investment and how its financed, partly due to data constraints.