*****With the usual apologies for cross postings...*****
Second Call for Papers – Fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography, Oxford, 19-23 August 2015
Session: Rethinking regulation and regulatory spaces in finance
Organisers: Sabine Dörry (University of Oxford), Gary Dymski (University of Leeds)
Global finance has been significantly transformed from a ‘Main Street model’ that finances innovation and product manufacturing, so as to raise wages and stimulate demand, into a capital-accumulating ‘Wall
Street model’ whose innovative capacity creates ever more sophisticated financial contracts that nurture financial speculation. This transformation entails both a shift from banking to shadow banking, an explosion of the sources of credit supply, and a continual
reshaping of different geographies of finance across all scales. At the heart of this ongoing process is the problem of regulation, since innovations often are undertaken to offset and avoid it, or in response to regulatory structures’ intended or unintended
effects on incentives for participants in financial markets.
The relevant terrain of regulation, however, is not restricted only to the realms of financial actors, sectors, and products – that is, to authorities’ efforts to condition the organisation and spatial architecture
of financial production. As significant are continuing legal innovation processes that define distinct traits of a territory’s financial business environment. Financial centres, for example, have been shaping new competitive regulatory spaces for finance,
and defining new property rights within these spaces. These in turn attract activities and players who can benefit from these spaces’ regulatory arbitrage opportunities.
The global financial crisis and ensuing Eurozone crisis offer many targets of opportunity for analysing fragmented regulation, the evolution of arbitrage finance, and the formation of new regulatory spaces.
This session invites papers that explore the shape of what should be done (scope), and how (ways and means), and what should be left alone (exceptions). Thematic suggestions include, but are by no means exhausted
by, conceptual and empirical contributions on:
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processes of discourses and negotiation between regulatory / state authorities and financial elites in shaping the key conditions of regulatory spaces;
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competing regulatory environments and the current status of the often-proclaimed ‘regulatory’ race to the bottom;
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spatial and organisational consequences of shadow banking activities;
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conceptual elaborations on off-shore, mid-shore and on-shore finance as regulatory spaces;
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(missing) regulatory linkages between physical and ‘virtual’ regulatory spaces, e.g. dark pools, cryptocurrency markets, and so on;
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the geo-political lessons that can be drawn from previous ‘waves’ of de- and re-regulations;
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the complexities of the structure-agency relationships that emerge between territories and financial activities;
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contemporary and future challenges to the nature, scope and scale of financial geographical research focusing on regulation, regulatory arbitrage, and regulatory spaces.
Please send abstracts (of maximum 250 words) or enquiries to Sabine Dörry ([log in to unmask])
and Gary Dymski ([log in to unmask]) by
14 April 2015.
For more information about the Fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography, please visit:
http://www.gceg2015.org
Dr Sabine Dörry
Marie Curie Research Fellow
University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment
South Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3QY
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 275898
www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/sdoerry.html
Co-Editor Articulo - Journal of Urban Research