A HIERARCHICAL CHANGE MODEL OF BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES IN THE UNITED STATES

Abstract

Using County Business Patterns from 1977 to 1996, this study found that the location change in business and professional services, measured in relative terms, is organized around the hierarchy of metropolitan areas. Sectors in business and professional services showed different types of location changes during the study period because they are in different stages of a general hierarchical process. This process is conceptualized in a three-stage descriptive model. In the first stage, business and professional services centralize up the hierarchy. In the second stage, business and professional services begin to decentralize at the top while centralization is still going on at the bottom of the hierarchy. The last stage is a complete decentralization down the metropolitan hierarchy with the bottom of the hierarchy getting more and more shares of business and professional services. This model is an effort to fill in the gap in conceptualizing the location of intermediate services. [Key words: services, location change, hierarchical model, metropolitan areas.]