Chapter 8 Location Choice of Japanese Multinationals: Country Characteristics or Region Characteristics?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the location choice of Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs) in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam.By examining region-level location choice with the nested-logit model, I investigate the relative importance of not only country characteristics but also region characteristics.Furthermore, the use of the nested-logit model enables us to examine substitution patterns between country-based and region-based location decisions by MNEs in the concerned countries.I also incorporate MNEs' productivity into the model and examine how productive firms are likely to invest in respective countries.