On the intra-regional diffusion of business services activity

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Abstract
Bearse P. J. (1978) The intra-regional diffusion of business services, Reg. Studies 12, 563–578. This paper treats the spatial decentralization of industry as a problem in spatial diffusion. Business services are viewed as innovations, and we identify those factors which influence the time at which a business services activity ‘arrives;’ i. e., is first reported at a given type of location within a region. Specifically, we analyse the diffusion of business services activity within a 73 county region surrounding New York City. Since the spatial diffusion and industrial transformation of an industry are viewed as interdependent processes, the spatial distribution of the main economic attributes of the industry are explained in terms of arrival times and the characteristics of the sub-regional economic environments in which the industry locates. The paper concludes with some observations on the consistency of our findings with those from other innovation diffusion studies, spatial and non-spatial.