Thesis states there are 128 pages. However, only 126 pages provided. (chronological from 1-126) / The purpose of this thesis is to examine foreign firms' spatial economic impacts on Canada with particular emphasis on the industrial linkage and spatial employment effects. The thesis focuses on the recent characteristics and strategies of foreign firms, which include rationalization and restructuring, in Canada.
FDI in Canada is decreasing in a relative sense, while the share of foreign control and ownership in Canadian industry have remained almost constant for last twenty years: about sixty per cent and fifty per cent in the manufacturing sector, respectively. Furthermore, foreign firms recently increases acquisitions of Canadian firms, disinvestment from Canada, and remittance to the home countries in the form of royalties and license fees. Foreign firms seem to have contributed to the deficit of international balance of payments in Canada. Also foreign control over the Canadian economy is increasing without a corresponding increase in new capacity, income and employment.
The linkage analysis and Spearman's rank correlation analysis reveal that foreign investments in Canada prefer to concentrate in industries with lower backward linkages and higher forward linkages. Foreign firms in Canada heavily depend upon foreign sources of material inputs and are directed to Canadian market for their outputs. This indicates that foreign firms' role in Canadian international balance could be negative.
Along with decreasing rate of growth of FDI in Canada the employment of foreign firms has decreased rapidly, while their spatial concentration has increased. In addition, the rapid decrease in foreign employment in Canada's lagging regions since 1970 also contributed to regional disparity. For the locational change over the last two decades, domestic firms have been more dispersed out of Ontario and Quebec than foreign firms. Foreign firms were more stable then domestic firms implying that they specialized themselves in the plant level to cope with the changes in economic climates while domestic firms might have adjusted themselves possibly by relocation and plant closures and new set ups.
Foreign firms have positively influenced some parts of Canada's competitiveness through rapid specialization and productivity growth and have negatively influenced some parts of Canada's competitiveness, including the tendency toward importing, weak development in high-technology industries, less R & D activity and employment. The rapid specialization and productivity growth of foreign firms can contribute to enhance Canada's competitiveness at the expense of employment loss and regional disparity. In addition, considering Canada's poor performance in high-technologysectors and R&D activity in spite of the fact that foreign firms show rapid specialization, productivity growth, and growth in high-technology sectors, the spillover effects of foreign firms are not so satisfactory as expected in Canada. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/15639 |
| Date | 03 1900 |
| Creators | Nahm, Kee-Bom |
| Contributors | Papageorgiou, Yogos Y., Anderson, William P., Geography |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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