1. Introduction and overview

The touchstone for this volume is the work of Edward Safarian, widely recognized as the ‘Dean’ of Canada’s scholars who study foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational enterprises (MNEs). A professor at the University of Toronto since 1966, Safarian has been President of the Canadian Economics Association (1977–78) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1973. From his pioneering works on The Canadian Economy in the Great Depression (1959) and Foreign Ownership of Canadian Industry (1966) to his later works on Governments and Multinationals: Policies in the Developed Countries (1983) and Multinational Enterprise and Public Policy: A Study of the Industrial Countries (1993), Safarian has been a major contributor to our understanding of multinational enterprises and public policy. The occasion of his eightieth birthday in 2004 provided an obvious opportunity, not only to celebrate his academic and policy contributions, but also to contribute new work that is forward looking. Governance, Multinationals and Growth is a theme that reflects the main strands in Safarian’s work on multinationals. The springboard for many of the papers was Safarian (1966), which covered a broad range of issues concerning multinationals in a host country, including parent–subsidiary relationships, intrafirm trade, creation and transfers of knowledge within the MNE, and the impact of nationality on firm performance. The papers were designed to build on Safarian’s contributions by exploring the linkages among multinational enterprises, growth and governance, and by addressing issues that remain unresolved or under-researched in the thematic areas of his work. Some of the broad areas covered at the conference were: