STATE, CLASS AND INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL 1: BACKGROUND TO THE BRASILIAN STEEL INDUSTRY

By 1980, the Brasilian steel industry had grown to be the eighth largest among the market economies. It is a largely state-owned industry, much of the expansion of which has been funded by international capital. The pattern of development has not been externally imposed, however, but rather reflects the changing balance of class forces within Brasil as policies oscillate between nationalist, populist limits on foreign investment and open, pro-development strategies that rely on foreign investment. Both policies develop their own contradictions, that are reflected in frequent military interventions.     

DO METROPOLITAN AREAS MEAN ANYTHING? A RESEARCH NOTE*

This note analyzes whether central cities and suburbs of a metropolitan area relate to each other in a meaningful way. Specifically, it analyzes whether there is a factor specific to the metropolitan area in central-city and suburban growth once national and regional factors have been taken into account. Data are analyzed for growth of metropolitan areas from 1960 to 1980.     

SHARABLE INPUTS,PRODUCT VARIETY,AND CITY SIZES*

In this paper, I investigate some of the causes of city formation in spatial economies. A model is proposed in which an intermediate differentiated input shared by more than one industry is the cause of the formation of diversified cities. The desire of both the traded-good and the local-good industries to employ a variety of inputs from the intermediate industry provides the reason for the agglomeration of the three industries. In addition, the paper contains a comparative-statics analysis of the model in an open and a closed-city framework. It is demonstrated that the larger the city, the more variety of intermediate inputs the city can provide and the more specialized it is in the production of the traded-good. Moreover, the model suggests that different industrial structures will result in different city Sizes.