Modelos basados en la interpenetración virtual entre superficies

The discussion in Section 2.3 underscores that global cities and hinterlands are territorial formations that arise from micro-level location incentives that operate at the firm and plant level. In particular, the headquarter operations of globally oriented superstar firms and advanced producer services are subject to centripetal agglomeration forces that pull them towards certain urban areas where they derive distinctive benefits (given the nature of the tasks they undertake) from geographic co-location (i.e. global city agglomeration economies); on the other hand, for domestically oriented firms and the production plants and back-offices that are part of the extensive supply chains of superstar firms, the costs of clustering in global cities (i.e. global city agglomeration diseconomies) exceed the benefits, and these economic activities therefore disperse across a large hinterland region outside of these global cities.

This section considers the broader territorial economic implications of the location patterns arising from these agglomeration and dispersion incentives. In particular, it provides an account of how the global cities discussed above become the territorial “winners” of

globalization, while hinterland regions become globalization’s territorial “losers.” The answer to the question of how and why the economic benefits of globalization come to be concentrated in global cities, while the costs of globalization are borne by hinterlands, is not obvious; after all, while the headquarters of superstar firms and advanced global producer services are concentrated in global cities, they nonetheless make up only a fraction of a global city’s economic base, which also includes a large share of non-tradable services that are not directly linked to the global economy. Moreover, while hinterlands contain disproportionately large shares of domestically

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oriented firms and services, they are not shut out of the global economy entirely, since the supply chains of global firms extend through these large hinterland regions. We therefore need an account of how the location patterns described above generate a territorial axis of “winners and losers” over globalization that maps on to the territorial division between global cities and hinterlands. In other words, we must address the following question: what are the mechanisms that link the agglomeration and dispersion forces discussed in the previous sections to a divergence in the broader territorial economic interests of global cities and hinterlands with respect to globalization? How exactly, in short, do global cities emerge as globalization’s territorial “winners”, and hinterlands its territorial “losers”? In Section 2.3.1, I consider the processes by which global cities have emerged as globalization’s territorial winners; in Section 2.3.2, I consider how the mirror image of the processes analyzed in Section 2.3.1 contribute to the globalization-driven stagnation and decline of hinterland regions.

2.4.1 Global Cities as the Territorial “Winners” of Globalization: The Territorial

Agglomeration of Superstar Headquarters and Front-Offices, the Positive

Local Multiplier Effects of Globalization, and Globalization-Driven

Prosperity in Global Cities

My central argument in this section is that the economic benefits of globalization are concentrated in global cities, which thereby become the territorial “winners” of globalization, because the territorial agglomeration of the headquarters of superstar firms and advanced producer services in these cities is associated with large globalization-driven local multiplier effects that underpin the growth and prosperity of the broader metropolitan economies of global cities.

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Recall that globalization leads to the reallocation of resources from declining firms to the firms which engage global markets, and especially the superstars that engage foreign markets most intensely (Osgood et al 2017, 136; see also Section 2.2 above). The increased incomes flowing to superstar firms as a result of globalization are partly paid out to their (existing and new) employees; in a recent analysis of some of the political consequences of the Melitz model’s labor market effects, Walter (2017) notes that when superstars earn increased revenues as a result of expanded exports, they “partly redistribute [this additional revenue] to their high-ability workforce” (57). Superstar employees are in general more highly-skilled than the employees of domestic firms, but the most highly-skilled and highly paid of these superstar employees tend to work in headquarter operations located in global cities, where they carry out the non-routine and information sensitive tasks that benefit from spatial agglomeration (Moretti 2013: 78, 118). Moreover, we also would expect liberalization to lead to increased incomes for the employees of global producer services firms, whose businesses expand as liberalization increases demand for their services among superstars with expanded international portfolios, as well as among newly international firms that now need their assistance engaging foreign markets. The well-

compensated employees of superstar headquarters and the front offices of global producer services firms, in turn, spend a substantial part of their increased incomes on purchases of local services in the global cities in which they reside. These initial purchases lead to multiple rounds of additional spending that magnify the initial income gain, thereby giving rise to a prosperous metropolitan economy whose fortunes are positively tied to globalization on account of the spillover effects associated with the globalization-driven expansion of superstar and global producer services firms.

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The mechanism that links firm-level economic interests over globalization to the broader welfare of local and regional economies is thus a “local multiplier effect.” As Moretti and Thulin (2013) note, “the economy of a metropolitan area is a highly interconnected system”, and

increased income and employment for the globally oriented businesses (and their employees) concentrated in major global cities leads to increased demand for local services “like haircuts, restaurant meals, and medical care”, which pulls up the incomes of “hair stylists, waiters, and doctors in the city”; this in turn of course pulls up the incomes of the services purchased by these “hair stylists, waiters, and doctors” (Moretti and Thulin 2013, 339).9 _{We can summarize the steps}

in the argument tying together the agglomeration patterns of superstar and producer services headquarters to the emergence of global cities as the territorial “winners” of globalization, as follows: