Inter- and intra-city networks: how networks are shaping China’s film industry

Abstract

While existing studies have mapped out various networks with some visualization techniques, we move one step forward by examining if city/firm performance is dependent not only on intra-city networks, as proposed by the clustering literature, but also on inter-city networks, the core concept in the world city network literature. Our second contribution is to investigate the complementarity between inter- and intra-city networks, and how it could affect the performance of firms and cities. In doing so, we provide some preliminary evidence that studies on clustering and the world city network could benefit from having more dialogues with each other.