When does international knowledge connectivity of global cities attract R&D investments? The role of concentrated ownership through organizational pipelines

We argue that the degree of concentrated ownership of international knowledge connections of a city in the hands of a small number of MNEs reduces the potential for knowledge spillovers and has a negative influence on the attractiveness of a city for new R&D investments. Ownership concentration in international knowledge connections reduces the positive influence of two complementary characteristics of international knowledge connectivity: the international connectedness (“depth”) and the geographical diversity (“breadth”) of the cities' international knowledge networks. Our analysis of the location decisions for 3235 new cross-border R&D investments made by 1599 firms distributed across 71 global cities (2003–2016) provides support for these hypotheses.