Competitiveness and the Urban Economy: Twenty-four Large US Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

During the past decade, as trade barriers have been lowered as a consequence of trade liber-alisation negotiations conducted at both the international and the regional levels, urban economies have been increasingly vulnerable to competitive forces emanating from the most distant corners of the global economy as well as having been presented with previ-ously unimaginable opportunities for pene-tration of markets equally distant. National governments have accepted self-imposed constraints on their capacity to intervene in their own economies, through adoption of limitations on the use of tariffs, quotas and other traditional devices, and through estab-