IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wiwrsa/ersa98p345.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Internet, industrial location, and geographic markets

Author

Listed:
  • Johannes Traxler

Abstract

Over the past years the commercial use of the global computer network Internet has steadily increased. The main focus of the paper is on the potential spatial consequences of Internet adoption and use, analyzed from a theoretical perspective. The commercial use of the Internet can have a wide range of potential implications for the local and regional economy. Spatial changes, however, typically do not result from telecommunications technologies directly, but rather from organizational changes in businesses in reaction to advances in telecommunication. Starting with organizational theories of the firm, the paper first discusses the changes that take place in companies that use the Internet for various activities. At the firm level, cost reduction and changes in the internal structure of the firm are probably the most commonly expected and anticipated results. The use of this technology also changes the inter-firm relations and provides new possibilities for business start-ups. The potential spatial implications resulting from these changes, in particular for cities, might be serious and far-reaching. Regions that can provide the necessary technology in sufficient capacity will become more competitive and have an advantage over others that are not part of the global network. Distance will become less relevant, since virtual proximity and connectivity gain importance. The Internet increases the flexibility in the companies? location decisions and allows firms to expand their geographic markets and to operate at a global scale regardless of their location. In the second part, the paper discusses the economic impacts of the Internet and the potential spatial consequences in the framework of the global economy and the information society. The main focus here is on agglomeration and network theories and their different treatment of the role of information and of information technologies. The paper concludes with first results of an empirical study of the Internet use by private research laboratories in the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Johannes Traxler, 1998. "The Internet, industrial location, and geographic markets," ERSA conference papers ersa98p345, European Regional Science Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa98p345
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www-sre.wu.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa98/papers/345.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Howells, Jeremy R., 1995. "Going global: The use of ICT networks in research and development," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 169-184, March.
    2. E Romanoff & S H Levine, 1993. "Information, Interindustry Dynamics, and the Service Industries," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 25(3), pages 305-316, March.
    3. W B Beyers & D P Lindahl, 1997. "Strategic Behavior and Development Sequences in Producer Service Businesses," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(5), pages 887-912, May.
    4. Beyers, William B. & Lindahl, David P., 1996. "Lone Eagles and High Fliers in Rural Producer Services," Rural America/ Rural Development Perspectives, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, vol. 11(3), June.
    5. Brynjolfsson, Erik., 1991. "An incomplete contracts theory of information, technology and organization," Working papers #126. Working paper (Sloa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    6. A G Hoare, 1975. "Linkage Flows, Locational Evaluation, and Industrial Geography: A Case Study of Greater London," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 7(1), pages 41-58, February.
    7. Erik Brynjolfsson & Shinkyu Yang, 1997. "Information Technology and Productivity: A Review of the Literature," Working Paper Series 202, MIT Center for Coordination Science.
    8. John Friedmann, 1986. "The World City Hypothesis," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 69-83, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Margarita Billon & Roberto Ezcurra & Fernando Lera‐López, 2009. "Spatial Effects in Website Adoption by Firms in European Regions," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 54-84, March.
    2. Ovaskainen, Marko & Ritsilä, Jari, 2000. "Electronic Commerce And Regional Economies - Concentration Vs. Centralisation," ERSA conference papers ersa00p79, European Regional Science Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Traxler, Johannes, 1999. "From the Space of Flows to a New Business Geography: The Internet, Firm Location, and Clustering," ERSA conference papers ersa99pa125, European Regional Science Association.
    2. William B. Beyers & David P. Lindahl, 1998. "Services and the new economic landscape," ERSA conference papers ersa98p391, European Regional Science Association.
    3. Anthony Goerzen & Christian Geisler Asmussen & Bo Bernhard Nielsen, 2024. "Global cities, the liability of foreignness, and theory on place and space in international business," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 55(1), pages 10-27, February.
    4. György Csomós & Géza Tóth, 2016. "Modelling the shifting command and control function of cities through a gravity model based bidimensional regression analysis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(4), pages 613-615, April.
    5. Yin-wah Chu, 2008. "Deconstructing the Global City: Unravelling the Linkages that Underlie Hong Kong's World City Status," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(8), pages 1625-1646, July.
    6. Jeroen van der Waal, 2012. "Post-industrialisation, Immigration and Unemployment: How and Why the Impact of Immigration on Unemployment Differs between Dutch Cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(8), pages 1711-1724, June.
    7. Wang, Huanming & Ran, Bing, 2022. "How business-related governance strategies impact paths towards the formation of global cities? An institutional embeddedness perspective," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    8. Sang-Yong Lee & Kim Lim, 2006. "The impact of M&A and joint ventures on the value of IT and non-IT firms," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 111-123, September.
    9. Renato A. Orozco Pereira & Ben Derudder, 2010. "Determinants of Dynamics in the World City Network, 2000-2004," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 47(9), pages 1949-1967, August.
    10. Piotr Raźniak & György Csomós & Sławomir Dorocki & Anna Winiarczyk-Raźniak, 2021. "Exploring the Shifting Geographical Pattern of the Global Command-and-Control Function of Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-15, November.
    11. Marshall Van Alstyne & Erik Brynjolfsson & Stuart Madnick, 1993. "Ownership Principles for Distributed Database Design," Working Paper Series 142, MIT Center for Coordination Science.
    12. Durugbo, Christopher & Tiwari, Ashutosh & Alcock, Jeffrey R., 2013. "Modelling information flow for organisations: A review of approaches and future challenges," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 597-610.
    13. O'Connor, Kevin & Fuellhart, Kurt, 2013. "Change in air services at second rank cities," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 26-30.
    14. Wojan, Timothy R. & McGranahan, David A., 2007. "Ambient Returns: Creative Capital's Contribution to Local Manufacturing Competitiveness," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 36(1), pages 1-16, April.
    15. Virag Molnar, 2010. "The Cultural Production of Locality: Reclaiming the ‘European City’ in Post‐Wall Berlin," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 281-309, June.
    16. Xu Zhang, 2018. "Multiple creators of knowledge-intensive service networks: A case study of the Pearl River Delta city-region," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(9), pages 2000-2019, July.
    17. Belderbos, René & Du, Helen S. & Slangen, Arjen, 2020. "When do firms choose global cities as foreign investment locations within countries? The roles of contextual distance, knowledge intensity, and target-country experience," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(1).
    18. John P. Boyd & Matthew C. Mahutga & David A. Smith, 2013. "Measuring Centrality and Power Recursively in the World City Network: A Reply to Neal," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(8), pages 1641-1647, June.
    19. Zwiers, Merle & Kleinhans, Reinout & van Ham, Maarten, 2015. "Divided Cities: Increasing Socio-Spatial Polarization within Large Cities in the Netherlands," IZA Discussion Papers 8882, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Aurélie LALANNE & Guillaume POUYANNE, 2012. "Ten years of metropolization in economics: a bibliometric approach (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2012-11, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa98p345. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gunther Maier (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ersa.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.