Back
phd_schmutzy.pdf
Doctoral thesis

The spatial organization of firms in Switzerland : three essays on infrastructure, place-based policy, and corporate networks

BP2-STS

  • Fribourg [Switzerland], 2026

1 ressource en ligne (xvi, 211 pages) ; 1 fichier pdf

PhD: Université de Fribourg (Suisse), 08.06.2026

entreprises
distribution géographique
géographie
autoroutes
réseaux d'entreprises
politique publique
encouragements fiscaux
création d'emplois
promotion industrielle
frontières
années 1940
années 2000
Suisse
English This thesis studies how infrastructure, public policy, distance, and borders shape the spatial organization of firms in Switzerland. It focuses on the period from the 1940s to the early 2000s, during which a small, highly open economy with strong internal borders (linguistic, religious, and cantonal) gradually built a unified national market through large-scale transport investments and regional policies. The three essays combine new historical data on all Swiss corporations with information on transport infrastructure, place-based interventions, and firm connections via shared board members to study where economic activity takes place, how it is reorganized over time, and how it is coordinated through corporate networks.Together, the essays show that accessibility improvements and targeted subsidies can durablyincrease firm creation, but the corporate network's architecture remains strongly shaped bydistance and internal borders, highlighting the limits of infrastructure and policy in overcoming spatial segmentation.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
Notes
  • Bibliographie
License
CC BY
Open access status
diamond
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/335788
Statistics
Document views: 20 File downloads:
  • phd_schmutzy.pdf: 26