9305714 ERICKSON The tremendous growth of producer-services employment in the United States in the last few decades has resulted in a proliferation of research on the location of producer-service activities. General theories of producer-services locations have been evolving, with special attention in recent years given to two divergent perspectives regarding the relative importance and impact of factors like market size, agglomeration economies, labor costs and quality, infrastructure, and amenities. One perspective holds that the knowledge-intensive nature of many producer services requires frequent face-to-face contact and sophisticated telecommunications equipment usually found in higher-density urban concentrations. The other perspective posits that producer services follow firms in the goods-producing sector and gravitate to lower-cost sites outside higher-ordered urban centers. This doctoral dissertation project will examine the spatial dynamics over the last decade of one set of firms, the U.S. investment-management industry. Special attention will be given to examining the spatial distribution of firms and their assets, to assessing the impact of communications and information- handling technologies on locational tendencies, and to identifying the factors that account for the location of different types of firms. Both primary and secondary data will be used to examine the pattern and structure of investment- management industry location in 1983, 1987, 1990, and 1993, and a mail questionnaire will elicit from leaders of firms factors that influence their locational decisions. Follow-up interviews will explore important issues in greater depth, especially the extent to which information transfer via telecommunications links has become a viable substitute for face-to-face communications. This industry-specific research will contribute to the emerging body of knowledge about producer-services location, and it will provide the basis for furthe ring analyses of the impacts of telecommunication technologies and infrastructure on the spatial concentration of financial services. As a doctoral dissertation improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. ***
