CONTENTS

BOOK REVIEWS

Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity, edited by Xiangming Chen Yehua Dennis Wei, pages 319–20
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The Geography of Transport Systems, Second Edition, by Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Claude Comtois, and Brian Slack Andrew R. Goetz, pages 321–322
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The Polycentric Metropolis: Learning from Mega-City Regions in Europe, written and edited by Peter Hall and Kathy Pain Ludger Basten, pages 323–324
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Knowledge in the Development of Economies: Institutional Choices Under Globalisation, edited by Silvia Sacchetti and Roger Sugden Pierre Desrochers, pages 325–326
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Universities, Knowledge Transfer and Regional Development: Geography, Entrepreneurship and Policy, edited by Attila Varga Helen Lawton Smith, pages 327–329
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ABSTRACTS

Space-Time Variations of Human Capital Assets Across U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1980 to 2000, by Allen J. Scott

Abstract: This article examines the changing structure of human capital in U.S. metropolitan regions from 1980 to 2000. Data are drawn from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Intensive empirical investigation leads to three main conclusions. First, forms of human capital in the United States are becoming more oriented to labor tasks that call for cognitive-cultural skills. Second, cognitive-cultural skills are accumulating most intensively in large metropolitan areas. Third, physical or practical forms of human capital are increasingly being relegated to smaller metropolitan areas. That said, important residues of human capital, focused on physical or practical tasks, remain a durable element of the economies of large metropolitan areas. I offer a brief theoretical explanation of these results.

Key words: human capital, urban hierarchy, cognitive-cultural economy, metropolitan economy.

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Selling City Futures: The Financialization of Urban Redevelopment Policy, by Rachel Weber

Abstract: This article examines the specific mechanisms that have allowed global financial markets to penetrate deeply into the activities of U.S. cities. A flood of yield-seeking capital poured into municipal debt instruments in the late 1990s, but not all cities or instruments were equally successful in attracting it. Capital gravitated toward those local governments that could readily convert the income streams of public assets into new financial instruments and that could minimize the risk of nonpayment due to the actions of nonfinancial claimants. This article follows the case of Chicago from 1996 through 2007 as the city government subsidized development projects with borrowed money using a once-obscure instrument called Tax Increment Financing (TIF). TIF allows municipalities to bundle and sell off the rights to future property tax revenues from designated parts of the city. The City of Chicago improved the appearance of these speculative instruments by segmenting and sequencing TIF debt instruments in ways that made them look less idiosyncratic and by exerting strong political control over the processes of development and property tax assessment. In doing so, Chicago not only attracted billions of dollars in global capital but also contributed to a dangerous oversupply of commercial real estate.

Key words: public finance, risk, real estate, Tax Increment Financing, capital switching.

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Listing BRICs: Stock Issuers from Brazil, Russia, India, and China in New York, London, and Luxembourg, by Dariusz Wójcik and Csaba Burger

Abstract: In the past decade, hundreds of companies from emerging markets have listed their shares on American and European stock markets. Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) are the main countries of origin of issuers, and stock exchanges in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Luxembourg are the main destinations involved in the process. We use a comprehensive data set for these home and host markets for the end of 2008 to explore the intensity of foreign listings, the subnational geography of cross-listed firms, and the destinations of foreign listings. Cross-listing firms tend to be relatively large and come from capital-intensive, export-oriented, and high-growth sectors. Trading links with and industrial specialization of the host markets affect the choice of destination markets. These patterns, however, are not universal across countries. There is a high concentration of cross-listed firms in the leading financial centers of the BRIC countries, particularly in Russia and Brazil. Firms outside of the leading centers rarely cross-list, and when they do, they enter second-tier host markets. While BRIC countries have a large potential for further foreign listings, the process remains politically sensitive. Our results highlight the shortcomings of the literature on cross-listing in economics and the significance of the cross-listing phenomenon to future research in financial geographies.

Key words: foreign listing, stock markets, financial geographies, emerging markets.

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Cultivating Beyond-Capitalist Economies, by Sarah Wright

Abstract: Conceptualizations of the economy as diverse and multiple have garnered increased attention in economic geography in recent years. Against the debilitating mantra of TINA (there is no alternative), these conceptualizations use an ontology of proliferation to insist that many viable and vital alternatives to capitalism do, in fact, exist. I aim to contribute to this project with a close reading of the diverse formal and informal economic practices associated with the village of Puno in the Philippines. In doing so, I respond to calls for work that begins in the majority world and that focuses on the broader political project associated with diverse economies. Research in this area has frequently been critiqued for not paying sufficient attention to the unstable yet persistent exclusions that may endure in, and may even be enhanced by, alternative economies. With this article, I aim to investigate the ways that power relations work through the diverse economies of Puno and the ways that residents act to transform these relations. In doing so, I draw on the experiences of three residents of Puno and their involvement in three social movement organizations. I find that the economy is usefully understood as a site of struggle in which residents work to redefine themselves and the economy. The diverse spaces of their economic lives are neither strictly alternative nor mainstream, inherently oppressive nor radical. Rather, the people of Puno are engaged in willfully cultivating spaces-beyond-capitalism through which they transform the very meaning of economic practice.

Key words: diverse economies, alternative economic spaces, Philippines, social movements, formal and informal economies, ethnography.

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