Producer Services,Labor Market Segmentation and Peripheral Regions: The Case of Saskatchewan

ABSTRACT Within the last decade, a considerable literature has emerged on the growth and location of producer services employment in North America, and in the role of labor market characteristics in shaping these changes. One of the outcomes of this research has been the realization that producer services are overwhelmingly concentrated in metropolitan areas, and that there is a strong core-periphery dichotomy in the representation of these activities. This paper explores the labor market characteristics of a set of producer service activities within the peripheral urban hierarchy of Saskatchewan, Canada, dominated by the regional cores of Saskatoon and Regina, and surrounded by ten peripheral regions. The data set was provided by Employment Canada, and divided into Canada Employment Centre (CEC) Areas. It was found that the higher order producer services, such as Finance and Business Services, are significantly underrepresented relative to the rest of Canada, while others, such as Services to Primary Producers and Transportation and Communications, are significantly overrepresented. However, the nature of these services, as reflected in their labor market characteristics, are very different. Gender and the role of part-time labor appear to be distinguished on the basis of the specific producer service sector, with very few distinctions across space. On the other hand, differences in the roles played by part-year labor is less related to the sector and more related to position within the peripheral hierarchy. Although the heartland-hinterland model is usually applied at national or even international scales of analysis, the nature of the segmentation of the producer services labor force, and its relationship to urbanization and development of the sector, imply that the model can in fact be used as a fiamework for analyzing intraregional employment relationships within the periphery. This study highlights the nature of the labor force as one aspect of this framework.     

Producer services and growth management of a metropolitan region: the case of Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia

Producer services growth can change the character of a metropolitan region. Achieving that outcome may require the intervention of government, which is not necessarily a simple process as it creates tension between regulatory and developmental roles for government. This paper will address three interrelated issues in connection with the above-mentioned core idea in the context of the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: first, the extent to which the evolution of the Malaysian economy has been felt in the growth of the service sector; second, the way that evolution has led to change in the sectoral and spatial character of Kuala Lumpur; third, government’s responses in terms of spatial planning and management in order to accommodate producer services growth. The experience of the Kuala Lumpur region shows how global market forces and national development policies that influence producer service location and growth can reshape the spatial arrangement of a metropolitan region. Managing the growth of producer services calls for new approaches to manage metropolitan change. An ‘enabling’ model is proposed to replace the present ‘policing’ model of spatial planning.     

Global‐local initiatives in FDI: The experience of Shenzhen,China

Abstract: In 2002, China surpassed the USA to become the world's largest foreign investment destination. Many Chinese cities, especially those along the coast, have become hot spots for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The urban development of these Chinese cities, as in most market societies, has increasingly depended upon their global connections. However, it is unclear to what degree the governments of these cities are able to influence the decisions of foreign investors. This paper uses Shenzhen city as a case study to examine how multi‐nationals’ spatial and sectoral patterns have been changed over time and to what degree the local government has been able to influence multinationals’ locational and sectoral selection. It is concluded that Shenzhen has managed to create a strategy to maximise its ability to benefit from global economic forces and to attract multinational manufacturers in the locality, and particularly in increasing its target sector of technology‐intensive industry. This case study demonstrates the importance of a strong city government in managing growth and reacting decisively to globalisation.     

Spatial structure and inter-firm networks of technical and information producer services in Seoul,Korea

A spatial and sectoral reorganisation of producer services has begun to change the urban structure of Seoul. In addition to the existing centre of the CBD, two areas, Kangnam and Yongdeungpo, have emerged as the new centres of producer services in Seoul resulting from relocations from the CBD and the location of firm start-ups and spin-offs, so creating a multi-centred structure. There is a difference between the centres related to the fact that Kangnam is specialised in advanced services and has strong local networks among service firms, firms in Yongdeungpo have strong forward linkages to nearby manufacturing firms and to larger producer service firms, while firms in the CBD are relatively older and have much more intensive overseas ties. This outcome illustrates that shifts in the organisation of producer services in favour of outsourcing have been felt in shifts in spatial patterns. These new structures illustrate that producer service location and operation have a powerful influence upon the pattern of development in Seoul.     

Servicing Our Economy: Producer Service Location and Government Procurement 2004–2010 in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area

Harrington and Campbell (1997) previously illuminated the pattern of producer services' suburbanization in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area between 1970 and 1992. Their results showed producer services growing at a faster rate at locations farther from the central city. We revisit the topic utilizing data from 2004 to 2010, assessing not only changes in the distribution of producer services since their work, but also the impact of massive increases in defense spending on producer services' growth throughout the first decade of the twenty‐first century. Multivariate linear regression is used to estimate per capita growth of producer services employment using six independent variables. Our results reveal producer services employment during the time period has grown significantly more quickly in the urban D.C. core than the outer suburbs, contrary to Harrington and Campbell's research. Additionally, we find per capita producer services employment is self‐limiting over the study period: locations with more producer services employment in 2004 experienced significantly less producer services growth over the period. We find federal procurement has no correlation on producer services overall, with limited effects on some subsectors. Analyzing a select group of producer services subsectors revealed that no sectors followed the overall model exactly, suggesting that targeting producer services for growth must be done carefully. None of our models show employment diversity to be a factor in differentiating economic growth at the intra‐metropolitan level.     

The Growth of Producer Services Industries: Sorting Through the Externalization Debate

The development of a theory for explaining why firms externalize producer services functions is critical to gaining a better understanding of why the producer services industries have enjoyed robust growth within the United States, Canada and the European Community. Scholars of the service economy have attempted to develop explanations for the externalization of producer services functions. These explanations constitute “the externalization debate” since there has been a lack of consistency and agreement as to how and why externalization is taking place. None of the explanations for externalization approach what could be termed a theory of producer services externalization, since they consist of empirical generalizations that are not deductively connected. This paper attempts to move one step toward the development of such a theory by constructing a more comprehensive and systematic conceptual approach to analyzing the extemalization of producer services functions. The motivating factors for externalization that are proposed in the externalization debate are systematically examined. The insights of the transaction cost and production subcontracting literatures are then discussed and the implications of these literatures for producer services externalization are examined. A synthesis of the insights provided by these research literatures is then used to develop a more comprehensive analytical framework for examining producer services extemalization.     

Building knowledge city in transformation era: Knowledge‐based urban development in Beijing in the context of globalisation and decentralisation

This study examines knowledge‐based urban development in Beijing with the objective of revealing the impact of the ‘synergetic’ forces of globalisation and local government intervention on knowledge‐based urban development in the context of the coexisting processes of globalisation and decentralisation. The findings in this paper show that due to the rapid growth of the cultural industry sector, knowledge‐based urban development has created various kinds of ‘cultural industry clustered areas’, which were recently promoted by the 2008 Olympic Games. ‘Synergetic’ global and local forces are leading knowledge‐based urban development, with the emergence of a local coalition regime in which local government manages local development, considered as ‘enterprises’ in the decentralisation process, while the State retains a significant influence on knowledge‐based urban development. The central and municipal governments tend to emphasise strategies to ‘facilitate the climate for growth’ rather than the centrally planned control they exerted prior to the 1980s.     

Producer Services Development and the Role of Telecommunications: A Case Study in Rural Washington

Information-intensive producer services, which constitute one of the fastest growing components of the U.S. economy, have been identified as a potential contributor to economic development in rural areas. This issue is examined in a case study of a community in rural Washington State. The findings indicate that producer services have not been decentralizing to rural Washington, and that opportunities for producer services development in rural communities are limited because of the inaccessibility of markets, smaller pools of skilled labor, and the lack of agglomeration economies. Opportunities for producer services are greatest in large rural communities with high-quality telecommunications systems. Although the quality of telecommunications systems is important to the economic health of communities, advances in telecommunications can be a two-way street for rural America. While telecommunications improvements increase a rural community's access to information and make it possible for rural businesses to more easily serve non-local markets, they can also make it easier for firms located in urban areas to serve rural markets via branch offices or through the telecommunications system.     

Producer Services and Flexible Production: An Exploratory Analysis

While the flexible production literature has become increasingly abundant in recent years, the vast majority of it is narrowly restricted to manufacturing activities, entirely ignoring the role that producer services play in modern systems of production. This paper attempts to explore the conceptual linkages between the growth and the location of producer services, on the one hand, and the rise of flexible forms of production, on the other. After a brief summary of the flexible production approach, the factors underlying the growth and the increasing externalization of producer services are examined. The appropriateness of employing a flexible production framework in the case of producer services, and the significance of flexible production for understanding the location of producer services are then explored. Finally, the labor force effect of flexibility in the production and use of producer services is considered.     

生产性服务的发展与都市农业社会化服务体系的构建

农业生产性服务是为农业生产过程提供专业化、社会化服务的一种中间服务,是经济发展到一定阶段而出现的新兴业态。在现有文献研究的基础上,从生产性服务的定义入手,论述了农业生产性服务与农业社会化服务、农业现代服务等概念之间区别,阐述了生产性服务与农业发展的互动关系,并结合都市农业的功能特征,说明了都市农业具备先行发展农业生产性服务的条件,提出了构建可持续发展的都市农业生产性服务体系的政策建议。     

Master‐planned residential developments: Beyond iconic spaces of neoliberalism?

Master‐planned residential development has proliferated as a new residential phenomenon in metropolitan areas globally. The trend, the new governance mechanisms it entails and resultant forms of urban development have been critically theorised as products and vectors of neoliberalisation and iconic spaces of the neoliberal city. However, tracing the emergence and enactment of master‐planned residential estate (MPRE) development in Sydney, Australia, this paper suggests that more contingent and contextualised theorisations of such spaces can reveal possibilities for animating a different politics of MPREs. Deploying theorisation sensitive to the multiple drivers, logics and political projects played out through MPRE development in situated contexts, the paper traces the political genesis of these developments in Sydney, outlines the multiple drivers and logics accounting for their growing popularity and points to the salience of the complex performance of land and housing markets in their production. The post‐structural political economy approach used here to investigate MPRE development can overcome the politically constraining effects of the dominant neoliberal critique. It does so, first, by opening analysis up to the importance of logics, actions and contexts that are irreducible to neoliberalism and, second, by gesturing towards the potential for an alternative politics to be animated through mechanisms, techniques and processes of MPRE development habitually associated with neoliberalism.     

Bank Restructuring and Access to Financial Services: The Spanish Case

The Spanish bank sector has restructured extensively since the crisis erupted in 2008 in an attempt to correct the imbalances accumulated during the preceding boom years. Thanks to this restructuring effort, Spain's branch network has been pared back by 32 percent, prompting questions about potential ramifications for the population's access to financial services. Against this backdrop, this paper quantifies, at the municipal level, the segment of the population without access to a bank branch in their home town between 2008 and 2015, paving the way for analysis of the impact of the restructuring effort. It also analyses the role played by the three kinds of deposit institutions in Spain in providing access to financial services via their branch networks. The results show that although the percentage of the Spanish population without access to a branch in their home town has risen, the increase has been small, albeit marked by significant differences from one province to the next. The savings banks (including the former cajas that have converted to banks) are still the most important financial institutions in terms of facilitating branch access to financial services.     

Local geographies of globalisation: rural agglomeration in the Chinese countryside

China’s rural enterprises were responsible for 48 per cent of the $US 151 billion in exports and absorbed nearly 20 per cent of total foreign direct investment in 1996. Clearly, the significant and increasing role of rural enterprises in China’s integration with the world economy demands attention. The penetration of global capital into the rural enterprise sector and the desire of such enterprises to benefit from expansion into international markets have important implications at the local level. The impact of international, domestic and local forces on institutional and structural reforms is reflected in particular spatial outcomes in rapidly developing non‐urban regions. Local authorities have responded to external forces in ways which do not conform to the conventional expectations. Evidence from the lower Yangtze (Yangzi) delta reveals how the supposedly universalising pressures of globalisation have been mediated and adapted at the local level, particularly in terms of enterprise location and the proliferation of special zones. Expanding on the desakota hypothesis, the notion of rural agglomeration is introduced to capture the paradox of spatial economic transformation as it was linked to local circumstances, and localised responses to external pressures of globalisation.     

The relationship between overall happiness and perceived transportation services relative to other individual and environmental variables

Studies on happiness determinants have mainly focused on individual characteristics, but recently, the focus was extended to public services. Regarding the role of transportation services, however, few discussions exist on the overall happiness beyond the transitory happiness from a single trip, which differs by the mechanical characteristics of the transportation means, and particularly, those in non-Western areas are very few. This study analyses the perceived transportation services-happiness relationship using a social survey of 46 thousand citizens in Seoul, South Korea. How transportation services contribute to happiness is discussed in relation to the auxiliary travel utility through activities/non-activities on the way to the destination and to the intrinsic utility, which is generated by satisfying mobility instincts, in addition to the derived utility by those activities that are conducted at the destination, the traditional focus in the transportation literature. An analytical model based on partial least squares structural equation modeling estimates the relationship between happiness and the factor of perceived transportation services while controlling for seven factors. Analytical findings are that except for gender, the significance and magnitude of each of the indicators are comparable to those reported in previous studies and as expected, perceived transportation services significantly encourage happiness. Specifically, satisfaction with the pedestrian environment turns out to be more important in increasing happiness than that with other transportation services and between the two pedestrian environment indicators, satisfaction in the residential neighborhood is found to be more important than that in urban centers.     

Economic development and producer services growth: the APEC experience

This paper explores the idea that in the Asia-Pacific region the relationship between economic growth, industrial transformation and the rise of service industries in general, and producer services in particular, appears to be different to that found in North America or Europe. After an exploration of the context for producer services growth, some simple indices for measuring the relative position of Asia-Pacific producer services in the global context are used to demonstrate that they are apparently less prominent than expected. More robust data, including case studies, are needed to substantiate this preliminary paper. The paper concludes with the elements of an agenda for further research.     

No Man's Brand—Brands,Institutions, and Fashion

ABSTRACT Branding has become so intertwined with consumption that today's consumers have often deeply personal relationships to brands and brand histories. Branding is an attempt to strategically “personify” products and to encapsulate a balance between different economic values: quality, utility, symbolic, and cultural worth. In this paper we argue that the relationship between the contemporary consumer and producer is mediated by and governed by a reflexive construction of brands. As such brands are best understood from an institutional perspective. The paper illustrates the institutional role of brands by using the example of the fashion industry. It is argued that in the fashion industry, a focus on consumer‐producer brand‐building and brand loyalty is central to the commodity and value chains built around products. We conclude by suggesting that economic geography has consistently undervalued brands as an area of study. By taking brands as a core product in industrial production rather than as an interesting aside for sociologists, historians, and cultural theorists, economic geography can better understand the institutions governing the economy. In particular, better understanding the institution of brands helps us better appreciate the dynamics systems within which commodities and commodity chains are formed.     

Japanese service sector multinationals and the hierarchy of Pacific Rim cities

The explosive growth of Japanese service sector activities overseas since 1985 has had a significant impact on Pacific Rim cities. However, previous accounts of Japanese direct foreign investment in services have been constrained by official statistics which provide comparative information only at a national level. This paper uses establishment level data to assess changes in the spatial patterns of Japanese service firms among 35 cities as well as changes in the hierarchy of cities in the Pacific during the years 1985 to 1995. The period saw important changes in Japan’s economy such as the emergence of a ‘bubble economy’ up to 1990 and domestic recession after that. The results show the importance of Hong Kong, Singapore and Los Angeles as centres of Japanese service firms. However, the analysis indicates that a shift occurred in Japanese service sector focus over the study period, across the Pacific Rim from North America and Oceania to cities of the Asia-Pacific region. Along with that shift the concentration of services in just a few cities has remained unchanged, even though some new cities have emerged in importance.     

Educate,consolidate, immigrate: Educational immigration in Auckland,New Zealand

Abstract: This paper considers the convergence of immigration/globalisation and education in New Zealand. The issues of immigrant students at Epsom Normal Primary School were raised nationally in 1995, and this incident serves as a useful departure point to consider some of the challenges involved in bridging the gap between immigration and education. Educational immigration is a notion used by Belich (2001) amongst others, to suggest that immigrants arrive in New Zealand in order to bypass full cost fees paid by international students. This notion, while useful, is challenged. Research undertaken in North Shore City as well as official immigration figures show the complexities of the issue: immigrant communities may be indirect recruiters of these students, but there are also an increasing number of international students becoming permanent residents. Either way, education providers face particular challenges with migrant students, not only in terms of English language abilities, but also in the lack of financial incentive migrant students give to an education provider relative to international students’ contributions. These micro issues are placed in perspective when returning to considering the transient nature of many young migrants exploring opportunities in a globalised world.     

关于加快发展河南农业生产性服务业的思考

阐述了河南省农业生产性服务业面临的发展机遇,指出了加快发展农业生产性服务业的总体要求,提出了加快发展农业生产性服务业的重点任务,以期促进河南省适度规模经营、推进农业供给侧结构性改革。     

Education and Household Location in Chicago

This paper examines the choice of residential location in the city of Chicago versus its suburban areas. Data from the 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample from the 1990 and 2000 Census of Population and Housing are used. Particular attention is given to the effects of educational attainment. Place of work continues to dominate the residential location decision. However, conditioning on place of work, demographics, and income, educational attainment is found to be statistically significant in residential choice of the city versus the suburbs in 2000 for non‐Hispanic whites, especially those with graduate degrees. In contrast, more educated African‐Americans and Hispanics tend to locate in suburban areas.