Foreign direct investment in American service sectors: source country contrasts and locational determinants

Foreign direct investment in United States service sectors is an essential component of the competition among global industrial core regions. European, Canadian, and Japanese firms generate most foreign services jobs. Acquisition is the favored mode of entry and foreign establishments are generally larger and pay higher wages than their domestic counterparts. Though the surge of foreign investment in the 1980s was sectorally extensive, jobs in foreign services firms grew much faster than those in manufacturing. This paper reports a regression analysis of the location of foreign employment in six disaggregated sectors across U.S. states in 1987. The results show that foreign and domestic interstate locational patterns of employment strongly correlate. Because acquisition is the most common mode of entry, this empirical finding suggests that the supply of acquisition candidates primarily decides foreign investors' locational choices. Additional influences on location include the concentration of jobs in foreign business and professional services firms in localized areas of production, a general attraction of foreign investors in most service sectors to states with skilled labor forces, and an avoidance of Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states. I found little evidence that foreign investors in services avoid high-wage states more than their domestic counterparts.     

Spatial pattern of Japanese manufacturing industry in four ASEAN countries

Foreign investment by means of equity participation of foreign firms in local firms contributes to local industrial development through transfer of technology and through leveraging capital requirements. During the last two decades the nature of foreign equity participation in firms and the location of FDI in four ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, referred to hereafter as the ASEAN-4 countries) has undergone a significant transition. From 1980-1994, the Japanese manufacturing industry was the major foreign industrial investor in the ASEAN-4 countries. The spatial pattern of equity investment and employment generation has been very different among regions in the ASEAN-4 countries. Using the Theil index we estimate disparity in employment generation and equity investment within and between regions of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines in the context of each country's socio-economic geography and economic development characteristics.Received: 21 May 2002, Accepted: 14 May 2003, JEL Classification: F21, N950, R12The authors would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this research note.     

1990年代天津市外商投资空间分布基本规律研究

本研究运用1990年代天津市外商投资的抽样数据,通过GoldenSoftware软件建立二维、三维空间模型,重点分析了天津市外商投资的空间分布的若干特征:外商投资选址与城市工业园区以及机场、港口等大型基础设施密切相关;第二、第三产业外商投资分布分别呈现轴向、圈层规律;动态空间上有扩散——集中——扩散的趋势;外商投资在中心城区总体呈现中心—外围递减规律,并且指出这些特征体现了新兴工业国家大城市处于工业化的发展期或高速发展前期的空间特点。     

Employment-intensive growth for poverty reduction: What can labour-based technology in infrastructure contribute?

4. Conclusion: Employment-Intensive Investment, a Tool to Address Wider Policy Concerns Evidence presented in this paper indicates that a high rate of economic growth is a necessary precondition for a sustained reduction in poverty, but it is not enough. The degree of employment-intensity of the growth process is extremely important for achieving the goal of poverty alleviation. This is amply demonstrated by the contrasting experiences of the countries of South East and East Asia which succeeded in reducing poverty very substantially and those of South Asian countries where success in poverty reduction has been moderate. Limited data presented in this paper on selected African countries also points to the importance of employment. Indeed, employment-intensity of growth is seen to make a significant difference to the impact of economic growth on poverty reduction. Results of case studies presented in section 3 show that investment in labour-based approaches to infrastructure can not only generate much needed employment for the poor, but can also be technically sound and economically efficient. The added advantages of such approaches are their greater reliance on local resources and potential to save scarce foreign exchange. As infrastructure is a key factor in influencing investment, and economic growth, such an approach can engender a process of growth which is also employment-intensive and pro-poor. While the above has been demonstrated with particular reference to the infrastructure and construction sectors, there is also a great potential to apply similar approaches to other sectors, e.g, agriculture and forestry, manufacturing, environment protection, and services. If labour-based approaches could be mainstreamed into overall investment policies, that would enable the simultaneous pursuit of the objectives of economic growth, employment generation, and poverty reduction.     

Long-run regional employment changes in nine U.S. Industries

This empirical study is based on U.S. Census data, adjusted to facilitate comparisons between the years 1910, 1940, and 1970. Changes in employment for nine leading industries are compared, region by region, for the nine geographic divisions of the U.S. as classified by the Census. A region's high rate of employment growth in one or two industries is not usually found to be cancelled by low growth in another industry, and so the net result for the region is a relatively large increase in total employment. A region's growth in total employment appears to be affected more by its relative growth in the moderate-growth industries, however, than by its rate of growth In the high-growth industries. One or two regions sometimes experience an employment decrease in an industry while the other regions are growing in that industry, and the reverse situation has also occurred in declining industries.Thanks are due Avon Dreyer and Alan Nichols for their criticisms and suggestions.     

The agglomeration of U.S.-owned and foreign-owned plants across the U.S. States

Agglomeration in U.S. manufacturing is more common than initially thought. This clustering arises from location natural advantages and spillovers. Extant studies on agglomeration do not distinguish the activities of U.S.-owned plants from those that are foreign owned. This distinction is crucial since policies seem to have differential impacts on both types of plants. I find that industry scale, resource intensity and urbanization economies have larger impacts on foreign plant agglomeration whereas knowledge intensity has a larger effect on domestic plant agglomeration. Received: September 2001/Accepted: April 2002 I would like to thank the UNO University Committee on Research for support of this project and Ke Yang for invaluable research assistance. The paper has benefited from the comments made by an anonymous referee. The usual caveats apply.     

Location of foreign manufacturers in China: Agglomeration economies and country of origin effects

Using data from China, this article finds that agglomeration economies derived from the clustering of manufacturing and foreign investment activities, combined with better access to markets, influence the location of foreign manufacturers. Foreign enterprises are attracted to cities with investment incentives, but they avoid high labour cost locations. The locational patterns also suggest country of origin effects. American, Hong Kong and Taiwanese manufacturers tend to value access to domestic markets, while Japanese investors favour port cities. Further analysis indicates the presence of origin of country effects at the sectoral level.Received: 7 May 2002, Accepted: 12 November 2002, JEL Classification: F23, O18, O53Special thanks go to Jessie Poon, Zhaoyong Zhang, Breandán Ó hUallacháin and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors belong to the author.     

The regional labor market adjustment process: Determinants of changes in rates of labor force participation,unemployment, and migration

This paper employs a simultaneous-equations model to examine the regional labor market adjustment process for a sample of United States counties over the 1960–1970 period. The interaction between employment change and migration is well known, but that between employment change and labor force participation has been largely neglected. Labor force participation response, especially among women, is shown to be an important endogenous element in the labor market adjustment process. Important asymmetries are also evident between growing and declining regions, and these asymmetries suggest that the well-established link between employment and migration may have more force in growing than in declining areas.This study was supported by a grant from the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.     

Foreign labor and regional labor markets: aggregate and disaggregate impact on growth and wages in Danish regions

Foreign labor has become a central issue in Western Europe. This paper tests whether (1) inflows of foreign labor affect regional growth, and thereby whether employment opportunities for Danish workers are affected; (2) inflows of foreign labor lower real wage growth. We find that foreign labor has non-negative effects on the job opportunities for Danish workers in regional labor markets, whereas the evidence of a regional wage growth effect is mixed. We also present disaggregated results focusing on regional heterogeneity of business structures, skill levels and backgrounds of foreign labor. The results are interpreted within a specific Danish labor market context and the associated regional outcomes. This adds to previous findings and emphasizes the importance of labor market institutions for the effect of foreign labor on regional employment growth.     

The influx of high-income foreign nationals and the housing market in a developing country: a case study of Suzhou Industrial Park,China

Increasingly globalising human and capital mobility has created new dynamics to the housing market. Foreign nationals, strengthened by inflows of foreign direct investment, have appeared in major Chinese cities. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the impact of foreign nationals on China’s housing market. By using a case study of Suzhou, this research investigates the following research questions: How are foreign nationals associated with housing price increases in a globalising city? Where and why these impacts have been felt? This research conducted a survey questionnaire with 508 expatriate foreign nationals and built housing price data sets in Suzhou. A consumer theory provides a framework to understand different housing consumption behaviours of heterogeneous socio-economic groups. Findings represent that expatriate foreign nationals played a key role in a high-end housing market due to their higher income levels and housing subsidies provided by their employer. They tended to form ethnic communities in a prime location to better access language-specific services and quality amenity facilities.     

Agglomeration effects and the location of FDI: evidence from French first-time movers

This paper analyses the location choice determinants of French first-time investments in Europe, North America and North Africa. Firm locations are examined on two geographical scales, the national and regional level. The final sample comprises 307 location choices in 27 countries and across 45 regions. Both, location- and firm-specific variables are used for analyzing investment strategies. The results show that higher market demand and cultural proximity to France increase the likelihood of a particular location to be chosen, whereas higher labour cost and a larger distance between a foreign location and the headquarters deter FDI investments. Manufacturing and older companies are more likely to establish their first subsidiary in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, this study examines the extent to which French investors choose foreign locations that already host a significant number of French firms. The results obtained from regressions with various absolute and relative agglomeration measures suggest that French investors are rather attracted by firm cluster in general, or by the unobserved factors that led to the agglomeration in the first place, than by any nation-specific firm cluster.     

外交部办公楼设计及其联想

中华人民共和国外交部新办公楼于1997年6月20日香港回归祖国前夕举行了竣工典礼，标志着我国外交部终于有了自己的一座办公楼。40多年来外交部办公地址几经搬动，始终没有一个合适的办公处，现在的办公地址是原中国科学院情报所的办公楼。从90年代末就开始酝酿新建办公楼事，但由于种种原因，一直未能实现，直到1991年才决定新建办公楼。外交部于1991年8月向北京地区5家、外省市2家共7家设计单位征集方案，第一轮共征集到11个方案，这几个方案各具特色，均有相当水平，但由于与甲方的设想尚有一定的距离，决定再作第二轮方案，由建设部建筑…     

Export services in postindustrial society

While it is evident that employment in services now dominates the U.S. economy, we still have relatively little understanding of the spatial structure of trade in services. This situation is in part a legacy of our historic tendency to focus on the markets of manufacturing and primary production sectors on the theory that they are basic. However, the great expansion of services employment in our economy in recent decades means this assumption needs reexamination. This paper reports the results of interviews with 2,200 service sector firms in the Central Puget Sound region, exploring their degree of export orientation. These interviews show a striking degree of export orientation within these sectors. This study suggests that interregional trade in services is probably extremely important in the economic base of all major metropolitan regions.     

Rethinking the impacts of foreign investors on urban development: the city of Macao

A number of papers in the economics and urban literature find positive impacts of foreign investment on cities and praise the role of foreign investors in urban development. The author argues for a different stance by developing an urban economics model for tourist cities. The model illustrates that in the presence of significant side effects, foreign investors?? and a tourist city??s preferences regarding openness of the city greatly diverge. Foreign investors tend to shape a city??s policymaking toward greater openness. Therefore, policymakers in tourist cities concerned about sustainable development should carefully regulate foreign capital inflows at an optimal level. Evidence from Macao lends support to the theoretical construction.     

Where do foreign firms locate in transition countries? An empirical investigation

Firm-level data sets on foreign manufacturing plants in four Central and Eastern European Countries are used in this paper, to trace their location and estimate the determinants of their choice processes. A nested logit model as developed by McFadden (1974) is used in the analysis. A central focus of the analysis is foreign direct investment (FDI) which is a good indicator of where location of foreign investments is made. Several reasons explain the need for mapping the location of FDI. First of all, it facilitates understanding the real competitiveness of regions and countries in providing location advantages able to complement multi-national enterprises’ (MNE) specific advantages. Secondly, it directly shows the distribution of the benefits usually associated with FDI. Finally, an understanding of FDI location decisions is important for policy makers who believe that MNEs may offer a positive contribution to the economic development of disadvantaged areas and thus correct potential regional imbalances. The main results show that sector specific factors affect the choice of the final location. These unobserved characteristics influence both the determinants and the structure of MNEs location choice process. This paper has been written as a part of the Research Network on “The Impact of the European Integration and Enlargement on Regional Structural Change and Cohesion”, financed by the European Commission through the 5th Framework Programme. The authors are grateful to the other members of the Research Consortium and the participants at the international workshop “Modelling the Entrepreneurial and Innovative Space-Economy” organized by the Tinbergen Institute on 22–23 August 2005 for very helpful comments and suggestions provided on an earlier version of this work.     

AN EVALUATION OF THE GREEK REGIONAL INCENTIVES POLICY, 1972-1987

ABSTRACT In this paper an evaluation of the Regional Development Incentives Policy in Greece is presented for the 1972-87 period. The main argument in this evaluation is that the incentives polity had limited impact on private investment decisions and, instead, facilitated existing trends in the sectoral composition and spatial distribution of private investment. The empirical evidence in support of tins argument indicates that subsidised investment did not prefer the sectors and regions where the incentives were stronger, while its sectoral and spatial distribution was similar to nonsubsidised investment. A case study for one of the problem regions confirmed these results and gave rise to questions about the appropriateness of the incentives policy for the Greek regional problem.     

An integrated model of residential and employment location in a metropolitan region

The purpose of this paper is to improve the tools available for analyzing and evaluating land-use and transport policies in a regional planning context. A normative residential location submodel is combined with a predictive submodel for the location of employment. The demand side of the residential location submodel is formulated as a nested multinomial logit model of the joint choice of residential location and transportation mode. The cost of commuting is assumed to be a major determinant of locational choice. The employment location submodel is based on the assumption that accessibility to the labor force is the strategic location factor. Two versions of the submodels are proposed corresponding to a post- and pre-distribution modal split in the familiar four-step transport model. Policy tests of a newly proposed, large-scale traffic investment program in the Stockholm region are reported.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 30th European Congress, Istanbul, August 1990.     

The Locational Behaviour of Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence from Johannesburg, South Africa

This article represents a contribution to the limited scholarship on understanding the locational behaviour of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa. Against a background review of international research and debates on locational decision-making of foreign investors at both international (particularly within the developing world) and national scales of analysis, the profile and patterns of foreign investment in Johannesburg are documented and the key factors influencing investor location choice are analysed. Although investors from 34 countries are represented in Johannesburg, the leading ten investor countries, headed by USA, Germany and UK, account for 85% of all investments. An emerging trend is for the growth of FDI from India, China and the Middle East. Reasons given by foreign investors for selecting Johannesburg as an investment destination largely mirror the international experience of location decision-making by foreign investors. Johannesburg is shown to be the preferred choice for business operation both in South Africa and the broader southern African region because of several agglomeration factors which relate to the city's position as economic hub, financial centre and core market of southern Africa.     

The paradox of unequal regional investment and equal regional economic growth in China

China's policy on Special Economic Zones has attracted increasing flows of direct foreign investment to China. The investment has been very unequally distributed among China's 30 regions.  The article focuses on the regional economic growth as a result of the direct foreign investment in the region and its spillover effects on neighboring regions. The unequal distribution of direct foreign investment should in principle tend to enlarge the regional economic differences. The article, however, shows that this is not the result of the investment.  The empirical findings highlight the impact of direct foreign investment on the Chinese regional economies in transition. Received: November 2000/Accepted: August 2001