The missing link between global commodity chains and global cities: the financial service sector in Mexico City and Santiago de Chile

Since the 1980s, the economies of Mexico and Chile have passed through a profound process of globalisation. The result has been a nodalisation of the cities' economies, documented by their high concentration of command and control functions essential for economic globalization. In order to specify the relationship between global city formation and the deepening of global integration we draw on the findings of the global city and global commodity chain literature. Since advanced producer services have been identified as key actors in interlocking de-centralized production sites and urban networks we have analyzed the involvement of financial institutions in bond and share issues of the 50 top ran ked Mexican and Chilean en terp rises. Based on this initial empirical investigation we take a first step to specify how the two firm-based, trans-state networks - global city- and global production networks - relate.