The Economic Geography of the Internet 2.0

This paper proposes a new pathway to understand the spatial economic effects of the Internet. Although economic geography Internet-related research has been focussing on infrastructural measures, such approaches cannot capture the transformative nature of current Internet trends including the spreading of Social Network Sites (SNSs). This paper offers a new theoretical proposal to unpack the spatial economic effects that the Internet and SNSs generate nowadays through the enrichment of the social capital of individuals and the aggregated social capital of places. These effects complement existing agglomeration forces, but also transcend space and generate benefits for places outside the traditional core.