摘要：The contribution of this paper is its conceptual models and related data for identifying appropriate performance measures of an area's in-frastructure and using these measures, cognizant of their shortcomings, to estimate the value of this infrastructure in positioning the area for global competition. By focusing on the exports of a metropolitan area's industries, we identify the sources and facilitators of an area's economic growth and development. These include the institutions of higher edu-cation for sharpening the area's intellectual resources as inputs for pr o-ducing the unique outputs of its productive resources , and the air trans-portation communication facilities and services for moving these outputs to their highest and most worthwhile uses
