The Growing Localness of the Canadian City, or, On the Continued (Ir)relevance of Economic Base Theory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The past 50 years have brought massive changes in the patterns of economic activity around the world. Not only has global trade increased, but, precisely because of this, many scholars suggest that local (and regional) networks of production and exchange have become more prevalent and important. The nature of local economic development has, as a result, changed quite substantially. And yet theoretical approaches to it largely have not. Fifty years after Douglass North introduced economic base theory - asserting that economies grow only through increased exports - it remains the familiar refrain, if not the basis, of local economic development theory. We think it is about time to reassess the merits of base theory as an approach to, and explanation of, local economic development. Accordingly, in this article, we review briefly North's argument for base theory and the debate it stirred up early on. Then we present two evaluations of its current relevance. The first is theoretical: we consider whether changes in the patterns of economic activity in the global north, including the emergence of local/regional networks of production and exchange and the growth of consumer services, have made it possible to achieve economic growth without increasing exports. The second is empirical: using the minimum requirements method, we examine whether the economies of Canada's cities have become more locally oriented and, if so, whether they have grown. Both evaluations indicate that economic development is indeed possible through increased local activity (although exports remain important). We conclude that it is time to consider more nuanced models of local economic development that accommodate the multiple ways in which development can be achieved.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.020 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".