Patterns of Economic Development

• At the global scale, unevenness takes the form of core-periphery contrasts exist at the regional scale

• Core regions within the world system- North America, Europe and Japan- have the most diversified economies, the most advanced technologies, the highest level of productivity and the highest levels of prosperity

• Other countries- the periphery and semi periphery of the world system- are often referred to as developing or less developed

• The average GNI per capital of the ten most prosperous countries is 67 times greater than the average GNI per capita of the teen poorest countries

Divisions of Labor

• Geographical divisions of labor are national, regional and locally based economic specializations in primary, secondary, tertiary or quaternary activities

• A new international division of labor was initiated in the 1970s as a result of a major wave of corporate globalization. This new labor has resulted in three main changes: the decline of the US as an industrial producer, the decentralization of manufacturing production from the worlds core regions to some semi peripheral and peripheral countries and the emergence of new specialization in high tech manufacturing and producer services within core regions

Regional Cores of Economic Development

• Any significant initial local economic advantage-existing labor markets, consumer markets, frameworks of fixed social capital- tends to be reinforced through a process of cumulative causation, a spiral buildup of advantages that occurs in specific geography settings as a result of the development of external economies, agglomeration effects and localization economies

• Spirals of local growth tend to attract people and investment funds from other area. According to the basic principles of spatial interaction, these flows tend to be strongest from nearby regions and those with the lowest wages, fewest job opportunities, or least attractive investment opportunities

Globalization’s Effect on Economic Patterns

• The globalization of the world economy involves a new international division of labor in association with the internationalization of finance, the development of a new technology system and the homogenization of consumer markets

• This new frame work for economic geography has meant that the lives of people in different parts of the world have become increasingly intertwined

• Transnational corporations now control a large fraction of the worlds productive assists and the largest are more powerful, in economic terms, than most nations. These corporations have restructured their activities and redeployed resources among different countries, regions and places and have created many new linkages and inter dependencies among places and regions around the world linking the fortunes of diverse and distant local economies