Analyses of the financial system from various disciplines has yet to fully explore the connections between the geopolitical and geoeconomic discourses shaping States’ public finance and foreign policy, the role and localization of financial institutions and the evolution of international patterns of firms. Such topics are becoming increasingly relevant, as evidenced in a speech held […]
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Unfinished business: change in the US securities industry since 2008
– Dariusz Wójcik, Theodor Cojoianu – On 7 March 2017, the eve of International Women’s Day, State Street Global Advisors, the asset management business of State Street Corporation, issued a call to more than 3,500 companies they invest in on behalf of their clients to increase the number of women on corporate boards. At the […]
Continue readingGeographical Changes in Influence of Stock Trading Centres around the 2007 Global Financial Crisis
– Boulis M. Ibrahim, Janusz Brzeszczyński, Arnab Bhattacharjee – The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007 was a major event and a key milestone in the history of financial markets. Unparalleled in many respects, its economic consequences were stronger and its global impact wider than all earlier financial turmoil. In our paper, we analyse the […]
Continue readingThe Geography of Tax Evasion
– Manuel B. Aalbers – What is it about? Taxation in general and tax evasion in particular are inherently geographical in nature but not a very popular area of research. In this article I present geographers’ research on offshore financial centres alongside the work of researchers from other disciplines to present an overview of what […]
Continue readingGeographical limits to arbitrage in the global oil market
– Michael H. Grote, Matthew Zook, Thomas Heidorn – For more than 30 years, the world’s main indices for oil prices – West Texas Intermediate Crude or WTI (delivered in Cushing, Oklahoma) and Brent Crude (delivered at four ports in the North Sea) –have moved in sync. This changed dramatically in 2011, when WTI started […]
Continue readingThe Increasing Financialization of China’s Urbanization
– Thierry Theurillat, James H. Lenzer Jr. & Hongyu Zhan – Mainland China is well known for its massive and rampant urban development, looming property bubbles and ghost cities. How has this process of urbanization, which significantly contributes to its economic growth, been financed? For the vast majority of scholars focusing on urban China, land […]
Continue readingFinancial Circuits: Cyclicality, Leakiness and Social Housing Finance in Ireland and Denmark
– Michael Byrne and Michelle Norris – Denmark and Ireland are both small, open economies and both countries experienced housing bubbles followed by housing and financial busts between the late 1990s and the present day. While the nature and extent of the housing and financial crises experienced by each country differs (Ireland’s experience being significantly […]
Continue readingCluster dynamics of financial centres in the United Kingdom: Do connected firms grow faster?
– Vladimír Pažitka and Dariusz Wójcik – The aftermath of the global financial crisis (GFC) has seen a sharp reduction in employment in financial services in the United Kingdom, shrinking bank balance sheets and reduction in global corporate finance and investment banking revenue. Underneath the veil of this grim picture, however, there was a lot […]
Continue readingWhat is Financialization?
– Manuel B. Aalbers –Many financial geographers use the term “financialization”. But what is financialization? It clearly has to do with finance and the “-ation” part suggests that it is not a state or end result but an action, something that is made. So let’s start by looking at the meaning of “finance”. The term […]
Continue readingWhat on Earth is Financial Geography?
—Dariusz Wójcik— Is not financial geography an oxymoron? Why should geographers, naturally interested in travel, outdoors, breathing fresh air while doing fieldwork be interested in money, taxes, assets and liabilities? If you were interested in these things, would not you become an economist or at least an accountant rather than geographer? Take a look at […]
Continue readingThe Appleization of Finance: Reflections on the FinTech (R)evolution
—David Bassens, Reijer Hendrikse and Michiel van Meeteren— “[C]apitalism is a complex, adaptive system which has reached the limits of its capacity to adapt” (Mason 2015: xiii) In his book Postcapitalism (2015), the British journalist Paul Mason criticizes the ‘who is who’ of erstwhile revolutionary thinkers for their failure to anticipate the flexibility of the […]
Continue readingInvestment Banking Since 2008: The Geography of Shrinkage and Shift
—Dariusz Wójcik, Eric Knight, Phillip O’Neill and Vladimír Pažitka— Investment banks have been powerful financial institutions at least since the late 19th century. Their power stems from their role as the key financiers and advisers of corporations and governments, giving them privileged access to information, the main resource in global financial markets alongside talent, which […]
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