The Changing Geography of Advanced Producer Services Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives

The service sector is the fastest growing but least studied area of modern economic geography, so many economic geographers are now turning their attention to how the so–called ‘tertiary economy’ operates to produce distinctive patterns of location and regional development. Producer services are those provided to enterprises rather than to individual consumers, and this book is the first to be devoted specifically to assessing their role as spatial phenomena and agents of economic and geographical change. Daniels and Moulaert approach the topic at two levels; firstly theoretical, where conventional neoclassical models of production and exchange seem to have little value in explaining service production and therefore new theoretical perspectives need to be developed and, secondly, empirical, which presents regional development histories of producer services such as accountancy, consultancy or finance, to illustrate the complexity of the geographical dimensions of the modern service economy. This is a landmark book for students and researchers in geography, economics, planning and public policy. Contents

1. Advanced producer services: beyond the micro–economics of production — F. Moulaert and P. W. Daniels
2. A demand–orientated approach to understanding producer services — F. Martinelli
3. Production and circulation of scientific and technological knowledge: research and development as a specific economic activity — O. Weinstein
4. Institutional changes and provision of market services: lessons from the banking sector — P. Petit
5. Production and service supply structure: temporality and complementarity relations — A. Barcet
6. Producer services’ location and regional development — F. Martinelli
7. Location of services in a service society — S. Illeris
8. Localisation factors and development strategies of producer services — M.–C. Monnoyer and J. Philippe
9. The functional and spatial division of labour in information technology consultancy firms in Western Europe — F. Moulaert, F. Martinelli and F. Djellal
10. Producer services and the development of the space economy — P. W. Daniels
11. Branch plants and services underdevelopment in peripheral regions: the case of southern Italy — F. Martinelli
12. Transnational business service firms and developing countries — T. J. Noyelle
13. 13 Services and new industrial strategies: what is at stake for developing countries? — B. Lanvin Index