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AbstractThis paper rethinks the trajectories of regional development in an era of economic globalization. It argues for a more dynamic perspective on regional development that must incorporate both endogenous regional assets and strategic imperatives in global industries. Premised on theoretical advances in research into global production networks (GPNs) and global value chains (GVCs), a dynamic perspective of strategic coupling is further developed and reconstructed in this paper to demonstrate how regional development can result from the interaction effects of these regional assets and GPN logics. This perspective also points to different modes of strategic coupling for understanding the changing pathways of regional development. Several key issues for regional policy and practice are outlined to substantiate this call for a shift towards a dynamic and multi‐scalar view of regional development in today's global economy.

This paper focuses on the changing governance of economic development in a globalizing era in relation to the dynamics of global value chains and global production networks. Based on recent development in such East Asian economies as South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, I examine how, since the 1990s, the embedded relation between one variant of state institutions, known as the developmental state, and national firms, well integrated into global chains and networks spanning different territories and regions, has evolved. Because of the deepening strategic coupling of these national firms with lead firms in global industries, the developmental state's attempt to govern the market and to steer industrial transformation through direct policy interventions has become increasingly difficult and problematic. Through this process of strategic coupling, national firms have been gradually disembedded from state apparatuses and re-embedded in different global production networks that are governed by competitive inter-firm dynamics. While the state in these East Asian economies has actively repositioned its role in this changing governance, it can no longer be conceived as the dominant actor in steering domestic firms and industrial transformation. The developmental trajectory of these national economies becomes equally, if not more, dependent on the successful articulation of their domestic firms in global production networks spearheaded by lead firms. In short, inter-firm dynamics in global production networks tend to trump state-led initiatives as one of the most critical conditions for economic development. This paper theorizes further this significant role of global value chains and global production networks in the changing international political economy of development. Adapted from the source document.

This paper examines the changing role and governance of Singapore's two sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) over the past three decades - from their earlier participation in domestic national development to their more active involvement in Singapore's economic diplomacy. Based on a variety of sources and data, I argue that these two SWFs, Temasek Holdings and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, are state-sanctioned means to secure the economic future of Singapore; they are not strategic devices developed by the Singapore government to pose geopolitical or economic threats on other states. Over time, their economic functions and strategic orientations have evolved with the city-state's dynamic developmental trajectories in the global economy. In the post-Cold War era of global finance, these state-controlled and professionally managed financial investment vehicles are more visible and active in their global expansion and acquisition trails. There are thus significant challenges to their strategic governance and international legitimacy in this new world order. This paper considers some of these challenges in light of recent development in the two SWFs and assesses their organizational and institutional responses to such challenges in today's competitive global economy. This case study of Singapore's SWFs illustrates the critical importance for understanding the rise of SWFs from small states in the evolving global system. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

ABSTRACTThis paper offers an economic‐geographical interpretation of the role of transnational corporations (TNCs) in urban and regional development that is grounded inDunning and Lundan's (2008)Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. I argue that TNCs and their activity are indisputably one of the keys to understanding urban and regional development in today's globalizing world economy. To support this perspective, I will deploy the recently developed analytical framework of global production networks (GPNs) to unpack the complex and mutually dependent relationships between TNCs and urban and regional development. The paper first provides a critique of several recent influential theories of urban and regional growth and identifies the omitted components in such important actors as TNCs. It then offers an analysis of TNCs as key agents of urban and regional development on the basis of ideas on TNC strategies, networks, and regional institutions expressed inMultinational Enterprises. Finally, I draw upon a relational view of TNCs in GPNs to illustrate how urban and regional development is increasingly a "globalizing" phenomenon. Situated in recent work in economic geography, I elaborate on the concept of strategic coupling as an interfacing mechanism bringing together TNCs and development at the urban and regional scales.