Hollowing-Out, Trimming-Down or Scaling-Up‘ an Analysis of Head Offices in Canada, 1999 to 2002

Abstract

Recently, considerable public attention has been paid to the possibility that head office employment has been declining as a result of the migration of head offices to other countries, what is sometimes referred to as hollowing-out. This paper asks whether we have observed evidence of this process using new data from Statistics Canada’s Business Register, over the past four years (1999-2002). This paper provides a perspective on the changing significance of the head offices in Canada by measuring counts of head offices and their employment. Overall, the paper finds that there are relatively few sectors or enterprises with patterns of decline in their head office function.

Keywords: head offices, hollowing-out, agglomeration economies, information and communication technologies

JEL Classification: L1, O30, R30