Building a “Headquarters Economy”: The geography of headquarters within Beijing and its implications for urban restructuring

•There is a polycentric form of headquarters distribution and several clusters emerge.•There is a suburbanization of headquarters in Beijing.•Firm attributes can influence the location pattern of headquarters.•Headquarters distribution in Beijing has been shaped by market and state forces.•Headquarters location has played a key role in shaping urban structure of Beijing.

As command centers, headquarters (HQ) of large firms are crucial to the economy of cities where they are located. Since HQ of large firms play a key role in shaping the urban structure, it is important to investigate the locational patterns of HQ within a city for both academic and policy considerations. Based on a data set of publicly listed firms with HQ located in Beijing, we found that the spatial distribution of HQ is characterized by both agglomeration and dispersion. On the one hand, HQ are significantly agglomerated at different geographical scales. Several clusters of HQ have been identified in our study. Moreover, a suburbanization of HQ trend has also emerged. The regression analysis shows that firm attributes, including sector, scale, ownership and year of going public, may explain the location pattern of HQ. We conclude by providing a detailed analysis of HQ distributions within Beijing that is being shaped by both market and state forces; it also highlights the role of HQ location in urban restructuring. The agglomeration of HQ is persistent and could be the results of the interplay between market and state forces, among which the agglomeration economy as well as the urban planning are most important. The results could also shed some light on the development of a “HQ economy” and urban planning for other cities.