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The Annals of Regional Science

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17-06-2022 | Special Issue Paper

The global digital platform economy and the region

Author: Zoltan J. Acs

Published in: The Annals of Regional Science | Issue 1/2023

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Abstract

The information technology revolution (ITR) propelled a shift from the industrial age to the digital age. While in the industrial age it was easy to disentangle the distinctions between the city/region and the country based on proximity, in the digital age this is much harder. The digital age is characterized by the rise of multisided platform organizations, their platform-based ecosystem and the digital technology infrastructure. This paper takes an ex post evolutionary perspective and examines the successful firms of the global digital platform economy and the regions that produced them. We explore the question of what cities played the most important role over the past 50 years covering five distinct technologies: semiconductors, the personal computer, the Internet and search engines, smartphones and wireless, and cloud computing and matchmakers. Successful city/regional development requires the management of both the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem and the platform-based ecosystem simultaneously.

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The reference is to three universities that collaborated over the years: George Mason University, University of Amsterdam and Jonkoping University.

The distinction between the city and the region is an important one. The city is usually an administrative or government unit used to identify a space where laws are administered, taxes collected and rules promulgated. However, a city does not necessarily define an economic unit like a region or a country. Economic activity can and does spread across different administrative unite. A case in point in Washington D. C. Washington D.C. is an administrative unit along with the countries of Virginia and Maryland. For accounting purposes these economic areas are called Standard metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States. In Europe they are called NUTS regions. In this paper we use the designation of city-region where the city refers to the legal entity and the region to the economic space.

These approaches were underpinned by endogenous growth theory (Romer 1990).

This section draws on Acs et al. (2021).

See Anselin, Varga, and Acs (1997); Acs, Anselin, and Varga (2002a, b).

This section draws on Acs and Sanders (2020).

(Rochet and Tirole, 2003, 2006; Evans and Schmalensee, 2007, 2016).

Also see, Rysman, 2009; McIntyre and Srinivasan 2017; de Reuver, Sorensen and Basole, 2018; Jacobides, Cennamo, and Gawer, 2018; Jia, Cusumano and Chen, 2019, for a review of the literature.

The term country empire here refers to the eighteenth and nineteenth century when the Netherlands, France and Great Britain had empires as used in McCann and Acs (2010).

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Title: The global digital platform economy and the region
Author: Zoltan J. Acs
Publication date: 17-06-2022
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: The Annals of Regional Science / Issue 1/2023
Print ISSN: 0570-1864
Electronic ISSN: 1432-0592
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-022-01154-6

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