Where do manufacturing firms locate their headquarters?

J. Vernon Henderson; Yukako Ono

doi:10.1016/j.jue.2007.02.006

Where do manufacturing firms locate their headquarters?

J. Vernon Henderson, Yukako Ono

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

83 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Firms often separate headquarters' (HQ) functions physically from their production facilities and construct stand-alone HQs. By locating its HQ in a large, service oriented metro area away from its production facilities, a firm may be better able to outsource service functions in that local metro market and also to gather information about market conditions for their products. However if the firm locates the HQ away from its production activity, the coordination costs in managing plant activities are increased. In this paper, we empirically analyze the trade-off between these two considerations.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	431-450
Number of pages	20
Journal	Journal of Urban Economics
Volume	63
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2007.02.006
Publication status	Published - 2008 Mar
Externally published	Yes

Keywords

Coordination
Headquarters
Location decision
Manufacturing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics
Urban Studies

Access to Document

10.1016/j.jue.2007.02.006

Cite this

@article{6556adaf8dcd4934b07df621f30901e1,

title = "Where do manufacturing firms locate their headquarters?",

abstract = "Firms often separate headquarters' (HQ) functions physically from their production facilities and construct stand-alone HQs. By locating its HQ in a large, service oriented metro area away from its production facilities, a firm may be better able to outsource service functions in that local metro market and also to gather information about market conditions for their products. However if the firm locates the HQ away from its production activity, the coordination costs in managing plant activities are increased. In this paper, we empirically analyze the trade-off between these two considerations.",

keywords = "Coordination, Headquarters, Location decision, Manufacturing",

author = "Henderson, {J. Vernon} and Yukako Ono",

note = "Funding Information: We thank Jordan Rappaport for providing us the geographic data on USA counties. We also thank Hyoung-Gun Wang for excellent research assistant work. Finally, for helpful comments and discussions, we thank Jan Brueckner (Editor) and two anonymous referees. The research in this paper was conducted while the authors were Census Bureau research associates at the Boston Research Data Center. Research results and conclusions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily indicate concurrence by the Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, or the Federal Reserve System. This paper has been screened to insure that no confidential data are revealed. Support for this research from NSF (award No. 0111803) is gratefully acknowledged.",

year = "2008",

month = mar,

doi = "10.1016/j.jue.2007.02.006",

language = "English",

volume = "63",

pages = "431--450",

journal = "Journal of Urban Economics",

issn = "0094-1190",