Neil Reid

Abstract

Beginning in the mid-1980s Japanese manufacturing companies began to invest heavily in U.S. productioncapacity. This was partly a response to a weakening U.S. dollar and trade protectionist measures imposedby the U.S. government. Japanese investment in U.S. production capacity continues unabated today. As more and more Japanese manufacturers started manufacturing their products in the United States there was an interest among geographers to understand the spatial dynamics of this investment. Much of this investment was directed towards the automotive sector. Given the large amount of investment that flowed into the automotive sector the purpose of this is to summarize three decades of scholarly research on Japanese direct investment in this sector.

Keywords: Japanese direct investment, automotive sector, spatial dynamics, agglomeration economies, labour

Neil Reid, The University of Toledo Department of Geography and Planning Ohio 43606, Toledo: USA