Location determinants of new foreign-owned manufacturing plants

Manufacturing employment in the United States has tended to fall since 1979. Geographically, the Northeast and Mideast regions have incurred the brunt of this decline and, except in the Southwest region, urban countries have tended to fare worse than rural countries. Meanwhile, foreign-owned manufacturing has been playing a larger role in the U.S. economy, especially in the Great Lakes and Southeast regions. The current research explains the pattern-among regions as well as between rural and urban countries-of new foreign plant location. Proxies measuring economic size, labor force quality, agglomeration and urbanization economies, and transportation infrastructure are found to affect the location of new foreign-owned plants positively, while proxies for unit labor costs and taxes are found to deter the location of new plants. The key advantages of the Great Lakes region stem from relatively low unit labor costs and high manufacturing density, while high manufacturing density and low taxes are the key advantages of the Southeast region. Comparing urban with rural countries, nearly all the explanatory variables possess average values for urban countries that are more favorable to foreign direct investment. For example, the labor force is relatively more productive and skilled in urban than in rural countries.Investments, Foreign - United States ; Manufactures ; Industrial location

Foreign direct investment in China: a spatial econometric study

Foreign direct investment (FDI) began to flow into China with advent of reforms in 1978. Following a period of relatively slow growth, FDI inflows to China picked up after 1990, as China surpassed every other nation but the United States in attracting foreign investment. In particular, coastal regions of China have received the bulk of FDI inflows to the country. In this paper, we use province-level data to explain the pattern of FDI location across China. We build upon previous research, introducing new potential determinants, using more recent FDI data, and incorporating spatial econometric techniques. In doing so, we test for potential econometric problems arising from the spatial pattern of the data, and correct for them by running more appropriate models. We find that economic size, labor productivity and coastal location attract FDI, while higher wages and illiteracy rates deter it. The transportation infrastructure variables we try are not found to have statistically significant relationships with the level of FDI inflows across provinces.China ; Investments, Foreign ; Econometrics

Stochastic Resonance with a Single Metastable State

We study thermal instability in NbN superconducting stripline resonators. The system exhibits extreme nonlinearity near a bifurcation, which separates a monostable zone and an astable one. The lifetime of the metastable state, which is locally stable in the monostable zone, is measure near the bifurcation and the results are compared with a theory. Near bifurcation, where the lifetime becomes relatively short, the system exhibits strong amplification of a weak input modulation signal. We find that the frequency bandwidth of this amplification mechanism is limited by the rate of thermal relaxation. When the frequency of the input modulation signal becomes comparable or larger than this rate the response of the system exhibits sub-harmonics of various orders