1. Business services in financial globalization
2. China’s financial centers formation and development
3. Ecologies of advanced producer services and imaginaries of value
4. Ever more integration? Financial geographies of Europe
5. Financing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
6. Financial Centres across Africa, Middle East and Beyond: Emergence and Development
7. Financialization of urban (re)development in China and beyond
8. Financial Technology and Digital Inclusion
9. Geographies of Sustainable Finance
10. Global Financial Networks and Regional Development
11. Global Financial Networks: Framing empirical research in financial geography
12. Network approach to financial geography
13. The geopolitics of finance in non-core, semi-peripheral and peripheral financial areas
Should you are interested in any session listed above, please feel free to contact and send your abstract to the session organizers by 15 April 2019. You can find more details of each special session and contact information below.
1. Business services in financial globalization
Session organizers:
James Faulconbridge, Lancaster University UK (j.faulconbridge@lancaster.ac.uk)
Jonathan Beaverstock University of Bristol, UK (jonathan.beaverstock@bristol.ac.uk)
Karen Lai, National University of Singapore (karenlai@nus.edu.sg)
Sarah Hall, University of Nottingham, UK (Sarah.Hall@nottingham.ac.uk)
Session description:
Work on financial geography recognises the important ‘compact’ between financial services advanced business services (ABS; such as accountancy, law and management consultancy) and regulators. Put simply, financial globalization is not possible without this finance-ABS-regulation nexus. In this session we, therefore, seek to extend discussion of the work the wider infrastructures of ABS firms, regulators and policy makers do in financial globalisation. We are particularly interested in understanding the relationships between financial institutions, other business services, and regulators, the flows of people, knowledge and market-making devices between these sectors, and the material and institutional effects of the work of business services in the production of global financial architectures.
Papers might address topics such as:
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact j.faulconbridge@lancaster.ac.uk
2. China’s financial centers formation and development
Session organizers:
Xiaoyang Wang, Harvard University, USA (pkuwxy@pku.edu.cn)
Simon X. Zhao, The University of Hong Kong (sxzhao@hkucc.hku.hk)
Session description:
The emergence of China as an economic and financial power has heavily contributed to shaping the global financial landscape in the past two decades since its accession to the WTO, especially in the context of the global financial crisis and “One Belt, One Road” initiatives. Scholars from geography and related disciplines have thus started to draw attention to the geography and spatiality of money and finance, for example the rise of China’s financial centers. A large body of scholars have attempted to provide explanations for the changing geographies of money and finance. One of the most popular topics is the formation and development of financial centers in China. For example, Wójcik and Camilleri (2015) examine the financial geographies between Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai through connecting China’s financial centers and offshore financial centers. Their analysis highlights Hong Kong’s position as an intermediated IFC between global financial markets and mainland China. They also point to the advantages of Beijing over Shanghai as a command and control centre that attracts the advanced producer services. Similarly, from a network approach, Pan et al. (2016, 2017) examine the hierarchical network of the mainland’s financial centers by the foci of the venture capital firms and advanced producer services firms respectively; their research highlights Beijing’s leading role in the mainland’s financial services networks.
We invite papers on themes but not limited to the following:
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact 10613018@pku.edu.cn
3. Ecologies of advanced producer services and imaginaries of value
Session organisers:
Ms Maëlys Waiengnier,Université Libre de Bruxelles,(maelys.waiengnier@vub.be)
Dr Mariana Santos, Vrije Universiteit Brussel,(mariana.fa.santos@gmail.com)
Dr Vladimír Pažitka,Oxford University,(vladimir.pazitka@ouce.ox.ac.uk)
Session description:
Economic and financial geographers have posit concepts including advanced producer services (Sassen, 1991; Taylor, 2004), financial and advanced business services (Wójcik, 2012) and financial ecologies (Leyshon et al 2004; French et al. 2011; Lai, 2016) to study the spatial organisation of financial services, law, accountancy and management consultancy firms and their networks. In parallel of cultural economy- inflected geographies of money and finance have taken a similarly grounded interest in discrete, situated financial practices, techniques and circulations, from the viewpoint of the discourses, narratives and imaginaries enlivening them and performed thereby (Hall 2011; Christophers et al. 2017).
While these two paradigms in financial geography have developed without much interaction, this session calls for attention to the relation between advanced producer services complexes, and the narratives and imaginaries enlivening them. Notably, and in line with recent turn in economic geography towards questions of value, valuation and capitalization (Langley and Leyshon 2017), we invite work attending to APS as interfaces where professionals, firms, sectors that translate narratives, not necessarily always in a conscious manner, but that collectively create a milieu in which assumptions and imaginaries of value creation circulate. The digitization of consumer relationships, new ways of working, 'agile' practices, industry consolidations are all examples of narratives enacting the creation of value in contemporary capitalism, animating contemporary APS complexes and their specific practices.
We seek to better understand the interface between imaginaries and the ecologies of APS professionals, firms and sectors. We are interested in the rationales that circulate between these actors and how they translate into value creation. The objective is to trace the actors concerned, their networks and their geographies. We invite presentations that explore the making of narratives that engage with recent transformations in the sphere of economic geography, at professional, firm and/or sectoral level,
including but not limited to:Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact maelys.waiengnier@vub.be
4. Ever more integration? Financial geographies of Europe
Session organizers:
Nina Haerter (nina.haerter@vub.be)
Duncan Lindo (Duncan.lindo@vub.be)
Session description:
The dream of an integrated European financial market has existed for at least half a century. Financial institutions and state actors have made many steps towards this aim, sometimes more and sometimes less successfully. We have also witnessed dis-integration of some aspects of European finance, especially in times of crises, as well as uneven development, particularly in the peripheries. Many questions remain: what drives these processes, what policy tools could achieve integration and, importantly, the desirability of ever more integration.
Financial integration in Europe can be studied from above (e.g. regimes, policies, politics, supervision), from below (firms, consumers), from an international or comparative point of view (varieties of financialization/ variegated capitalism, regimes of accumulation, cross-border flows, M&A), and in many other ways. We invite paper addressing financial integration and changing financial geographies in Europe in some form or another, such as:
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact nina.haerter@vub.be
5. Financing Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
Session organizers:
Karen Lai, National University of Singapore (karenlai@nus.edu.sg)
Shaun Lin, National University of Singapore,(geolzs@nus.edu.sg)
James D Sidaway,National University of Singapore,(geojds@nus.edu.sg)
Session description:
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been proclaimed as a future-oriented project connecting Eurasia, but one that mobilises imaginations of historical linkages (Silk Roads notably). This panel is interested in, inter alia, where does the money associated with BRI come from and how to conceptualize BRI within wider circuits of capital, consumption, and crisis? What is the relationship of financing BRI to other financial flows, centres, institutions, infrastructures, and debt? How does financing BRI balance China's aspirations and visions with its overseas commitment and challenges? This panel will discuss these topics from a range of disciplinary perspectives such as economic geography, urban studies, geopolitics, international political economy and law.
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact geolzs@nus.edu.sg
6.Financial Centres across Africa, Middle East and Beyond: Emergence and Development
Session organisers
Elizabeth Cobbett, University of East Anglia (E.Cobbett@uea.ac.uk)
Nassar Alnassar, University of East Anglia (N.Alnassar@uea.ac.uk)
Session description:
This session invites participants researching on financial clustering, urbanisation of financial centres, financial zones, hubs and gateways across Africa and the Middle East. Timbuktu, a city in the modern West African country of Mali, was an important financial centre for the gold, salt, cotton and slave trades from the 10th to the 17th centuries. Along with Babylon, Constantinople, and Marrakech, this pre-colonial city was a vital node in a medieval world of trade and finance, linking traders to the Levant through Islamic trade routes and to the Mediterranean world via the Maghreb. As with this economic history, contemporary processes of financial clustering, construction of financial centres, development of financial zones across these same regions – sub Saharan Africa (SSA) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for instance in Lagos, Casablanca, Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Nairobi – remains largely unexamined in current scholarship. Yet, review of emerging financial centres in these regions reveals new regional financial geography. These processes will not only affect these territories but shape global financial networks as national markets integrate more deeply into global capital flows. Yet, while international financial centres (IFCs) develop recognisable characteristics required to partake in the global networking of global capital, each of these new and developing financial centres/hubs/gateways is also a distinctive product of national and local governance, postcolonial contexts, geographies, histories, and distinct cultures. Accordingly, we invite scholars researching the development of its nascent financial centres in SSA and MENA regions to partake in this session.
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact E.Cobbett@uea.ac.uk.
7. Financialization of urban and regional development in China and beyond
Session organizers:
Jie Chen, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China (chenjie100@sjtu.edu.cn)
Shenjing He, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (sjhe@hku.hk)
Tingting Lu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China (tingting.lu@sjtu.edu.cn)
Fenghua Pan, Beijing Normal University, China (panfenghua@bnu.edu.cn)
Fulong Wu, University College London, UK (fulong.wu@ucl.ac.uk)
Session description:
In an increasingly financialized global context, new financial tools linking to the capital markets have been widely employed in urban and regional development by governments, semi-public institutions, the private sector, and public-private-partnership of different sorts, and the built environment in general in cities and regions has become increasingly important investment markets for financial products. The relationship between capital markets and the built environment has been re-interrogated after the global financial crisis. Consequently, the last decade has witnessed a growing research interest in the financialization of urban and regional development in liberal market economies. While the financialization of urban and regional development is widespread globally, the driven forces, forms and consequences might be different from each other due to the variations of social, economic and institutional settings in which the process has been occurring. For instance, such process in China could take place in the way totally different from that in the liberal market economies. Even in the same country, the process in different cities and regions might has distinctive characteristics due to the different regional contexts. Admittedly, there is quite a lot existing literature on financialization of urban and regional development based on single case study in a particular city, which is certainly crucial to deepening the understanding of this process in different contexts. However, studies based on the experience from those countries beyond liberal market economies are still rare. More importantly, relevant research based on multi-case comparative studies remains surprisingly scarce.
We hereto call for a concerted effort to bring the discussions and examinations in this important research area to the fore, and in particular, from different context or comparative perspective. We invite papers on themes including but not limited to the following:
Please send your abstract about 250 words to tingting.lu@sjtu.edu.cn by 15 April, 2019. Notification of acceptance will be given by 25 April 2019. Contributors will be selected based on the quality of their proposal and alignment to the theme. The papers presented in this session with more regional focus, e.g., including a range of cases, being comparative, or having a developed wider relevance in terms of theoretical contribution to the field, will be invited to participate a special issue with Regional Studies. Full papers will be expected by 1 September 2019 and all submissions will be subject to the journal’s usual peer review process.
8. Financial Technology and Digital Inclusion
Session organizers:
Wei Wu, Oxford University (david_wq@163.com)
Session description:
Financial geographers have made significant contributions to theorising the role of finance technology in the global trend toward increased accessibility and inclusion. Topics central to recent scholarship on financial geography include the new business models and process of financial services, financial ecosystems, disruption to the conventional financial institutions, alternative financial provisions and fraud. Scholars across the social sciences have also shown how blockchain, new payment infrastructures, cloud service, big data and artificial intelligence have influenced the accessibility of financial services, but have a disproportional impact on the inclusion of women, the elderly, immigrant populations and remote communities.
This session seeks to explore topics on financial technology and digital inclusion. We seek discussions and papers that focus on the service providers in finance and information and their relations of the people and organization in a different level of spaces. It can between urban and rural areas, or between regional, national or international arenas. We welcome both theoretical, practitional and empirically-based papers that address themes including (but not limited to):
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact david_wq@163.com
9. Geographies of Sustainable Finance
Session organizers:
Theodor Cojoianu, University College Dublin (theodor.cojoianu@ucd.ie)
Sabine Dörry, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) (sabine.doerry@liser.lu)
Session description:
The topic of sustainable finance has gained attention around the globe given the different interventions of government or government backed institutions in financial markets with the purpose of accelerating the transitions towards a low carbon economy, the launch of numerous innovative financial instruments aimed at accelerating financing and innovation towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the active interest of financial institutions and intermediaries to effectively integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations in their investment decision making.
The geography of sustainable finance emerges at the intersection of the geography of financial intermediaries and their clients and the heterogeneity inherent in the geographical distribution of different sustainable development issues. We welcome a wide range of approaches in studying different aspects pertaining to the geography of sustainable finance. Suggested themes include:
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact theodor.cojoianu@ucd.ie or sabine.doerry@liser.lu.
10. Global Financial Networks and Regional Development
Session Organizers:
Fenghua Pan, Beijing Normal University, China(panfenghua@bnu.edu.cn)
Dariusz Wójcik, University of Oxford, UK(dariusz.wojcik@spc.ox.ac.uk)
Canfei He, Peking University, China(hecanfei@urban.pku.edu.cn)
Huasheng Zhu, Beijing Normal University, China(zhuhs@bnu.edu.cn)
He Wang, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong(hewang@cityu.edu.hk)
Session description:
The concept of global financial networks (GFNs) coined recently (Coe et al., 2014)has been used to analyze how firms interact with global financial markets (Wójcik and Camilleri 2015). The implications of GFNs for regional economies, however, have been understudied. On the one hand, the insertion of lead regional firms into GFNs can help develop pipelines for the inflow of capital and knowledge into a region, with benefits for regional and local firms. On the other hand it can lead to excessive financialization of regional economies. We call for theoretical and empirical research to deepen our understanding of the process, consequences and governance involved in the integration of regional economies into GFNs.
We invite papers on themes including but not limited to the following:
Why and how regional economies become integrated into GFNs The role of financial and business services as intermediaries between GFNs and regional economies
How regional and local institutions influence the integration of regional economies into GFNs Benefits and costs of integration into GFNs for regional economies The governance of GFNs
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact zhuhs@bnu.edu.cn.
11. Global Financial Networks: Framing empirical research in financial geography
Session organizer:
Dr. Vladimír Pažitka,Oxford University,(vladimir.pazitka@ouce.ox.ac.uk)
Session description:
The concept of Global Financial Networks (GFNs) can be defined as networks of financial and business services (FABS) firms and their activities. GFNs link financial centres, offshore jurisdictions and act as key intermediaries between transnational companies and territories. Analytically, this framework allows us to map and place finance in the world economy, and analyse the latter in a dynamic framework accounting for the forces of globalisation and financialisation. The focus of this session is on FABS and financial centres, two of the most central elements of the GFNs. Our session encompasses a variety of empirical approaches, ranging from semi-structured interviews, analysis of data on capital market transactions, to the use of city level and macroeconomic statistics. We demonstrate the potential for application of the GFNs framework in research areas including securities underwriting, M&As, asset management and discuss the development of emerging financial centres including Salt Lake City, UT and Jacksonville, FL. We map the positioning of FABS in GFNs, study the implications of such positioning for the power relations among FABS and their clients. Finally, we conclude with the associated implications for income inequality and economic growth.
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact vladimir.pazitka@ouce.ox.ac.uk.
12. Network approach to financial geography
Session organizers:
Thomas Sigler,(t.sigler@uq.edu.au)
Ben Derudder, Ghent University,(Ben.Derudder@UGent.be)
Xingjian Liu,(xliu6@hku.hk)
Fenghua Pan, Beijing Normal University, China(panfenghua@bnu.edu.cn)
Session description:
Network analysis has been widely applied to the study of structural relations between places, and actors, in the global economy. Network analysis holds great analytical potential, namely that it can simplify large network structures, understand the role of individual nodes within systems and sub-systems, and that it is relatively easily applied to large, complex data sets. This session welcomes abstract submissions by those whose research applies network theory and/or network analysis to financial geography. Abstracts can be empirical or theoretical (ideally both), and should link finance and financialisation to geography using a network approach.
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact t.sigler@uq.edu.au.
13. The geopolitics of finance in non-core, semi-peripheral and peripheral financial areas
Session organizers:
This special session aims to explore the entanglement of political and financial geographies in non-core financial regions, with a focus on:
1.The patterns and the changing strategies and policies of financial institutions;
2.The mutual influences between the state – in its entirety as well as in specific bureaucratic/public organizations and banks — and other financial institutions, especially with as they articulate in public policies, and politics
3.The power relationships connecting states, finance, and territory;
4.International financial practices, and trends in management and technology;
5.The behavioral responses of consumers and stakeholders in space and time;
6.The discussion on how can be conceptualized non-core financial areas.
We invite theoretical and case studies that explore how the financial transformations, in the semi-periphery and periphery financial system, generate new perspectives on the nexus between (geo) politics and finance.
In doing so, we seek to draw attention to the junctures and disjuncture between the financial semi-periphery and peripheries vs. the financial cores of North America, North-Western Europe, and East Asia.
Should you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact Silvia Grandi (s.grandi@unibo.it) and Juvaria Jafri (juvaria.jafri@city.ac.uk).
