It remains to be seen, for example whether China can continue to develop as a market economy while still retaining an authoritarian communist political system.

Without the parallel development of systems of monetary - and credit-based exchange - there could have been no development of economies beyond the most primitive organizational forms and the most geographically restricted sales.

Every production network has spatiality - the particular geographical configuration and extent of its component elements and the links between them.

Innovation - the heart of technological change - is fundamentally a learning process.

The primary driver of final consumer demand is, of course, the level of disposable income.

Transnational corporate networks, and their resulting spatial patterns, are always in a continuous state of flux. At any one time, some parts may be growing rapidly, others may be stagnating, others may be in steep decline.

More broadly, strategic alliances are more difficult to manage and coordinate than single ventures; the potential for misunderstanding and disagreement, particularly between partners from different cultures, is great. Certainly many such alliances are short lived.