This book offers a new understanding of how firms determine their location and what kinds of regional economic policies are needed to attract factories to a country and a region in a highly globalized economic setting. The theoretical and empirical analyses examine the influence of the transfer pricing system, corporate tax rates, and a country’s industrial structure on a firm’s decision to locate and the impact of firms’ location on regional economic activities. The theoretical analysis elucidates the importance of the above-mentioned factors in the firm’s selection of possible location. The empirical analysis uses as an example the case of a supply chain in East Asia. The empirical analysis is illustrated with the regional/spatial development experiences at the country level and city level of selected countries and cities. The analysis offers a perspective for understanding the spatial patterns of a cross-border production system.

The world economy is experiencing a very strong but uneven recovery, with many emerging market and developing economies facing obstacles to vaccination. The global outlook remains uncertain, with major risks around the path of the pandemic and the possibility of financial stress amid large debt loads. Policy makers face a difficult balancing act as they seek to nurture the recovery while safeguarding price stability and fiscal sustainability. A comprehensive set of policies will be required to promote a strong recovery that mitigates inequality and enhances environmental sustainability, ultimately putting economies on a path of green, resilient, and inclusive development. Prominent among the necessary policies are efforts to lower trade costs so that trade can once again become a robust engine of growth. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Economic Prospects. The Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.

This book explains the roles of the industrial location in vitalizing regional economies in various economic environments created due to the progress of globalization. Here, this book elucidates the impact of industrial location and locational factors on regional economies. It clarifies the effects on industrial location of regulations and corporate tax. And the book explains the regional economic influence of the employment and agglomeration that are factors influencing the location. It also focuses on some countries and examines the relationships between the industrial location and the vitalization of regional economy in each country. This analysis covers the automotive and high-tech industries in the northeastern region of China, the impact of urban systems on regional development in the Philippines, and firms in revitalization in the northern region of Sweden. And it reveals achievements and challenges in each region. Finally, the book clarifies that the level of achievement in regional development is related to the educational environment. It also suggests that the industrial composition of a region is influenced by the level of regional cooperation with other regions. The analyses in the book show that a region must select the industries that match its newly emerged regional characteristics for vitalization.

This book clarifies the mechanisms of economic globalization in changing industries’ locations and shows how industries’ locations have changed through those mechanisms. First, the book deals with the retailing industry. Introducing the concept of a contact price into the market area analysis, it is shown in Part I that retailers’ market areas and prices are changed in different ways by a reduction of transportation costs. The mechanism of these changes is explained by checking the contact prices at apexes of the retailers’ market areas. Then the book moves to the manufacturing industry and deals with a firm’s production process. Part II of the book shows the manner in which the production volume of factories within an agglomeration is decreased as the number of factories within the agglomeration increases. Subsequently, considering the fact that many production factories depart from agglomerations to other sites to reduce production costs, a method of searching for a factory’s new site is proposed in which a firm can seek out an optimal location of a factory in a short period of time. By referring to a chaotic phenomenon, a firm sets a location prospective area in a large geographical area and selects an optimal location within that area. In the third part of the book the city system is the focus. Part III elucidates the theoretical formation of a city system and analyzes structural changes of a city system due to a reduction of transportation costs. The mechanism of the change is explained by a flexible market area theory which studies a city system by using the market areas established in the free-entry equilibrium. Then, the economic relationships between the cities within a city system are examined from the point of view of the land rent in the cities’ areas. This analysis shows the influences of a change in the largest city on other cities. Finally, the relationships between a city system and regional performance are examined using real data. The examination shows that the city system reveals the regional performance.

This book presents a variety of research papers on factories’ locations, city systems, and regional development. Consisting of three parts, it provides insights into the locational aspects of firms’ activities from a strategic perspective. Part 1 discusses decision-making in the context of location, specifying the motivation for firms to move their factories provided by the corporate tax system. It also presents a case study from East Asia to clarify a mechanism by which firms move factories. Part 2 addresses city systems, offering theoretical clues to understanding why city systems are important to regional economies. It also clarifies from the empirical analysis the relations between city systems and the performances of regional economies. Part 3 investigates the topic of industrial parks, demonstrating how they form a basis for establishing industrial clusters in regional economies. In addition, it examines the economic phases, such as economic disparity, generated in the process of development.

This book reports on the latest, cutting-edge scholarship on integrating social network and spatial analyses in the built environment. It sheds light on conceptualization and Implementation of such integration, integration for intra-city level analysis, as well as integration for inter-city level analysis. It explores the use of new data sources concerning human and urban dynamics and provides a discussion of how social network and spatial analyses could be synthesized for a more nuanced understanding of the built environment. As such this book will be a valuable resource for scholars focusing on city-related networks in a number of ‘urban’ disciplines, including but not limited to urban geography, urban informatics, urban planning, urban sociology, and urban studies.

Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines need to bolster cooperation in their special economic zones (SEZ) to spur sustainable growth. This publication maps out and assesses the economic performance of SEZs across the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area. It highlights challenges they face including growing competition for foreign investment, international trade disputes, and digital transformation. The publication emphasizes the need for policy makers and stakeholders to intensify strategic collaboration to make their SEZs more competitive. Against the backdrop of COVID-19, it outlines practical steps to increase the role of SEZs in boosting trade, creating jobs, and building economic resilience across the four countries.