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**Apologies for cross-posting** CfP: The Role of Finance in Uneven Development: Financialisation or Financial Deepening? Paper session at the Global Conference on Economic Geography (July 24-28, 2018, University of Cologne) Session conveners: Ewa Karwowski (Hertfordshire Business School) and Nadine Reis (University of Bonn) This session questions the benevolent and growth-enhancing role of finance in development. It aims to critically reflect on the links and interaction between finance, financialisation and development. The role of finance in the uneven development of countries and regions across the globe is central and continues to be debated by leading world systems theorists, geographers and dependency thinkers (Harvey 1989, Arrighi 1994, Higginbottom 2013, Fischer 2015). Economic and political shifts have led to the rise and growth of financial sectors across rich countries since the 1980s, but adverse effects of financial innovation and financial sector growth have largely been neglected by policymakers and mainstream economists. There is disagreement about appropriate theoretical concepts such as 'financialisation' and 'financial deepening'. Financial development or financial deepening has been promoted as growth-enhancing by orthodox economists and the international financial institutions (IFIs) (Levine & King 1993, Levine 2005). By contrast, heterodox scholars have argued that financialisation is a new major dimension of unequal development on an international scale, since it has affected countries in the global periphery in different ways than core economies (Lapavitsas 2009, Painceira 2009, Becker et al. 2010, Powell 2013, Soederberg 2014, Akyüz 2017). While the empirical track record suggested that poorer countries integrated into global financial structures are increasingly exposed to financial and exchange rate crises (Dymski 1998; Arestis & Glickman 2001), it needed a deep financial crisis in rich countries to force a reassessment amongst mainstream economists and IFIs (de la Torre and Ize 2011, Arcand et al. 2012, Cecchetti and Kharroubi 2012, Sahay et al. 2015). Even following this reconsideration of existing theories the possibility of financial dependency and uneven development driven by finance is rarely explored in mainstream policy and academic discourses. We invite innovative theoretical and empirical contributions that address the links between finance, financialisation, development and their interactions from a North-South perspective, and/or with a view on the global periphery. Papers should tackle some of the following questions: - What is the role of finance in the creation and perpetuation of uneven development? - What constitutes financial dependency today, and how does financial dependency play out in the relationship between the Global South and the Global North? - Are lines of demarcation of North and South, centre and periphery, shifting with financialisation? - How does financialization affect economic development in the Global South? - (How) Does financialization create particular economic landscapes in the Global South? - What are the specificities of financialization in the Global South? - What are the class relations underpinning processes of financialization in the Global South? - How do financialisation and financial deepening relate and differ? - What can or should economic geography contribute to the study of finance in the Global South? Please submit an abstract (max. 300 words) by 15 March 2018 through the conference website https://www.gceg2018.com/nc/call-for-sessions-and-papers/submit-an-abstract.html AND email it to the session conveners Dr Ewa Karwowski (Hertfordshire Business School, [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) Dr Nadine Reis (University of Bonn, [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>). Dr Ewa Karwowski Senior Lecturer in Economics Hertfordshire Business School