Spatial Ownership Links of Major Corporations: The Dallas and Pittsburgh Examples

Abstract

This study focuses on the spatial ownership links between parent companies headquartered in Dallas and Pittsburgh and their subsidiaries. It also examines ownership links between subsidiaries located in these two centers and their parent companies. By several measures, Dallas and Pittsburgh function as command and control centers, i.e., they exert greater external control than they are controlled externally. In both centers, the ownership links are national but with a regional component. Pittsburgh shows a somewhat more dispersed pattern of external ownership than Dallas. Large corporations in these two centers demonstrate the interdependence of metropolitan economies by their dispersed set of ownership links and concomitant information linkages and control.