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Geographies of scope: an empirical analysis of entertainment, 1970-2000

2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jeg/lbq056

1468-2710

Richard Florida, Charlotta Mellander, Kevin Stolarick,

Spatial and Panel Data Analysis

The geographic clustering of economic activity has long been understood in terms of economies of scale across space. This paper introduces the construct of geographies of scope, which we argue is driven by substantial, large-scale geographic concentrations of related skills, inputs and capabilities. We examine this through an empirical analysis of the entertainment industry across US metropolitan areas from 1970 to 2000. Our findings indicate that geographies of scope (or collocation among key related entertainment subsectors and inputs) explain much of the economic geography of entertainment even when scale is controlled for, though our regressions over time suggest the role of scope is decreasing. Furthermore, we find that the entertainment sector as a whole and its key subsectors are significantly concentrated in two superstar cities—New York and Los Angeles—far beyond what their population size (or scale effects) can account for, while the pattern falls off dramatically for other large regions.