ABSTRACT
Economic Geography deals with spatial analysis and focuses on the placement or localization of objects in the ‘landscape’ and how they relate to each other. There is a long tradition in International Business of considering issues connected to the spatial distribution of assets, markets and interaction between these distributions by cross-frontier transactions including foreign trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). Early studies in International Business considered cross-frontier transactions, analysing the importance of access to raw materials, costs of transport, trade and investment obstacles, market conditions, and developments in labour forces that make locations attractive (Hymer, 1972; Knickerbocker, 1973; Vernon, 1979). Recent studies of multinational corporations (MNC) by International Business scholars focus on the distribution and interaction across space of economic activity in nations, regions and cities. Such studies consider the spatially determined factors that make location in developed urban areas and in more peripheral places attractive for MNCs (Buckley & Ghauri, 2004; McCann & Mudambi, 2004; Beugelsdijk, Mudambi & McCann, 2010). Spatial factors are integral although often not explicitly in International Business research.
