MARKET RULES AND TERRITORIAL OUTCOMES - THE CASE OF THE UNITED-STATES

Since the early 1980s, analysis of economic restructuring has focused on the global-local nexus as critical to explaining patterns of production organization, firm investment and territorial outcomes. Theoretical frameworks as divergent as those which analyse product-specializing industrial districts and those which examine the investment patterns of transnational corporations converge in attempting to link the global and the local. In part, this emphasis on global processes and local outcomes reflects an assumption that national market institutions have declined in significance as international markets have become more integrated and with the increasing mobility of finance capital. National institutions continue to influence firm decisions, however, through public and private 'rules' governing investment within and across firms. This paper makes a case for refocusing attention on the distinctiveness of national market institutions and explores the implications for the location of economic activities.