New Considerations for FDI Attraction: Comparing FDIs of Airbus in Mobile and Netflix in Toronto
Keywords:
foreign direct investment, return on investment, Airbus, Netflix, local economic developmentAbstract
This paper analyzes the return on investment (ROI) for the following North American Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects: Airbus in Mobile, Alabama, and Netflix in Toronto, Ontario. Information regarding the grants, abatements, and tax incentives offered by all levels of government in both case studies is presented in addition to the employment growth, job quality, and tax revenues gained from each project. A cost/benefit analysis of each FDI project demonstrates that Airbus had a poor ROI given the immense cost of the government incentives used, while Netflix realized significant gains despite having fewer government incentives available. As a result of these findings, this paper argues that Economic Development Officers (EDOs) should make industry-specific research when planning for FDI attractions and consider the benefits of investing in the creative economy compared to traditional sectors such as manufacturing.
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All content published in the Economic Development Journal of Canada is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Attribution (CC BY) International 4.0 license. The journal owns copyright for all works published prior to June 2020. The author(s) retain copyright for all works published after June 2020.
