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Copyright of Revue d'Économie Régionale & urbaine is the property of Librairie Armand Colin and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article reports that the cultural economy is defined in terms of a set of sectors ranging from certain traditional artisanal industries like clothing or jewelry on the one side, to newer media industries like sound recording or television program production on the other. This article provides an overview of the industrial dynamic of French society since the second world war and assesses its inimical effects on segments of the cultural economy. An empirical description of the cultural-products industries of Paris is offered, with special reference to their locational structure and their competitive advantages and disadvantages.

This article attempts to show how significant aspects of the French film industry can be understood in terms of the complex interplay between a functionally disintegrated system of production, a notably activist regulatory environment, and the specific geographic locale of Paris. The whole forms as dynamic network of interdependencies generating a constant stream of beneficial externalities that function as critical foundations of the industry's competitive advantages and creative capacity. many different kinds of industries in the modern world are characterized by similar functional and spatial attributes, but in the case of cultural-products sectors the concomitant analytical issues are especially intricate on account of the reflexive interactions that occur between the milieu, the workings of the industry, and the aesthetic and semiotic content of final products. in particular, because the outputs of cultural-products industries are usually marked by such an intimate relation to their place of origin the latter is of special significance in any investigation of their design dynamics and market trajectories. In France, a long tradition of public support for the cinema has helped to maintain it as a viable economic sector and as a lively and popular art.