The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between the host country’s national intelligence capitals (NICs) and its inward FDI in contingency with local protectionism and political stability. Using an ordinary least square regression to test our hypotheses with panel data of 1022 country-year observations from 2001 to 2020, we found that, more NICs of a host country will attract more FDI. Moreover, when the political stability of a host country is higher, the positive relationship between NICs and FDI will be strengthened. Nevertheless, a host country’s protectionism will
mitigate such a positive relationship. Our findings contribute to the international business (IB) literature by bridging the NICs constructs to the FDI context, as well as offering managerial implications to multinational enterprises (MNEs) in their foreign entry and host countries to increase attractiveness as an investment destination.

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