Perspectives drawn from the economic geography literature are increasingly used to generate insights into locational issues in international business. In this paper, we seek to integrate these literatures further by investigating the locational determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) into peripheral cities within an emerging economy. Peripheral cities in emerging economies are attracting a growing proportion of global FDI flows, but the international business literature lacks a framework for understanding subnational determinants of FDI, particularly into non-core locations. We draw on the core-periphery model to build and test theory on how spatial interdependencies between subnational locations impact on the distribution of FDI inflows into a large and heterogeneous country China. Our results show that whilst peripheral cities tend to have a negative effect on FDI, this effect is positively moderated by proximity to core cities. The results highlight the importance of considering interactions between place and space when investigating locational issues in international business.

Developed during World War II, "three-sector theory" popularized the notion of the "services" sector. It has quietly underpinned understandings of economic structure ever since. The limitations and influence of this basic breakdown have led to many critiques and extensions, but no replacements. Inspired by Lefebvre's Urban Revolution, we develop four-sector model which replaces services with sectors focused on urbanization and control. We argue this model is a better reflection of material economic life, and a more useful way of approaching the 21 st century economy. It also offers scholars of urbanization and regional development a creative new way of seeing urbanization.