Analyzing Diversity, Strength and Centrality of Cities Using Networks of Multinational Firms

Owais A. Hussain (), Faraz Zaidi () and Céline Rozenblat ()
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Owais A. Hussain: PAF-Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology
Faraz Zaidi: Region of Peel, Mississauga, Canada and PAF-Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology
Céline Rozenblat: University of Lausanne

Networks and Spatial Economics, 2019, vol. 19, issue 3, No 6, 817 pages

Abstract: Abstract Cities play an important role in the regional, national and continental development of economies, as well as global trade and infrastructure. Most of this development revolves around the presence of multinational firms and the inter-connected systems formed by their linkages. Analyzing the networks formed by these multinational firms can uncover many interesting trends and patterns providing insight into not only the development of individual cities, but also the various world regions they belong to. In this paper, we are particularly interested in networks of cities from the year 2010 and 2013 in order to understand how cities have changed in the context of networks of multinational firms. We consider diversity, strength and centrality as the key indicators to measure the importance of a city and based on these indicators analyze how cities have changed their roles in the networks of multinational firms overtime. We also introduce a cumulative ranking based on these three indicators to position cities in terms of their importance in the world. This study not only strengthens previous findings from a network analysis perspective but it also reveals the cities with considerable growth and/or significant decline over the periods studied.

Keywords: Complex networks; World cities; Multinational firms; Influence mining; Social network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11067-018-9428-8

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