A VÁROSOK POZÍCIÓJA A GLOBÁLIS GAZDASÁG IRÁNYÍTÁSÁBAN A NAGYVÁLLALATOK FORGALMA ALAPJÁN.

For more than two decades from the mid-1960s, researchers studying global metropolises identified the most important nodes of the global economy on the basis of the concentration and the performance of multinational corporations. Due to the changes in the economic Structure that started in the 1970s, as well as the separation between production and management, traditional research methods were no longer able to provide satisfactory answers concerning global metropolises. All of this led in the 1990s to an important paradigm shift whereby researchers no longer determined which cities qualified as global metropol ises on the basis of the presence of multinational corporations but the quantity and quality of advanced producer services. At the same time, even the most recent research findings concede that multinational corporations, rather than nation states with more limited opportunities, are in control of the global economy. In the present paper, therefore, we return to the "roots", and determine global metropolises on the basis of the cumulative sales figures of the world's largest corporations and the number of corporate headquarters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]