La localisation du commandement de l’économie dominante

Abstract

The paper examines the location of the headquarters of the World Top 500 and Top 2000 industrial corporations in 1978, 2000 and 2014. The first sub-period is characterised by the tertiarisation of the dominant economy and the weakening of the USA to the benefit of Japan, with a consolidation of the position of Europe. The second sub-period is more stable from a sectorial point of view, but characterised by the strong growth of China, coupled with the further weakening of the USA and now of Japan too. If some reorganisations of the metropolitan patterns can be observed in some countries, like the weakening of the Megalopolis in the USA, globally the economic decisional power remains very concentrated in a lot of metropolitan regions: nearly 2/3 in only 30 metropolitan areas.

Keywords

• global cities
• transnational corporations
• globalization
• headquarters