ACQUISITION VERSUS GREENFIELD INVESTMENT - THE LOCATION AND GROWTH OFJAPANESE MANUFACTURERS IN THE UNITED-STATES

Investigating foreign direct investment by principal modes of entry he lps explain the location of Japanese manufacturers in the United State s. Japanese greenfield start-ups and acquired planes had distinct inte rregional distributions in different decades. We use ordinary least sq uares and tobit regression analyses to account for interstate variatio n in the levels of Japanese acquired and greenfield establishment in 1 979, 1989 and 1992 and their expansion in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1 990s. The greenfield plants propelled the formation of automobile-base d industrial complexes in the Midwest and Southeast regions. Greenfiel d investors also avoided states with strong unions and, over time, the y became unconstrained by the general distribution of American manufac turing. Although supplies of procurable assets consistently constraine d acquisition flows, the Pacific Coast region was a focus of Japanese acquisition activity from the 1970s to the 1990s. During the 1980s, ac quirers contributed to the development of the: Japanese automobile com plexes in the Midwest and Southeast. They also avoided strong unions. Those latter factors, however, were not significant locational determi nants of acquisition flows in the 1990s.