A new economic geography of finance is emerging, and the current "financialization" of contemporary economies has contributed greatly to the reshaping of the economic landscape. How can these changes be understood and interpreted, especially from a territorial point of view? There are two contradictory economic theories regarding the tangible effects of the rise of the finance industry. According to neoclassical financial theorists, the finance industry's success is based on its positive effects on the real economy through its capacity to allocate financial resources efficiently. An alternative approach, adopted here, posits that finance does not merely mirror the real economy and that the financial economy, far from being a simple instrument for the allocation of capital, has its own autonomy, its own logic of development and expansion. A series of complex, and sometimes contradictory, connections link financial markets and the real economy, and there are some tensions between them, calling into question the coherence of the regional and national economies that follow from them. Moreover, the territorial approach shows how the mobility/liquidity of capital and the changing dimensions of new regions and countries are central to the finance industry's functioning. This article builds an understanding of the financial system through the lens of pension funds and highlights the impact of such a system on the real economy and its geography. , , , ,

Financialization is a major trend in Western economies. This paper shows, on the one hand, how it changes the management criteria and, on the other hand, the limits to financialization in the property sector. Between 1992 and 2004, about 15% of Swiss pension funds’ wealth was invested in property. As far as their investment policy is concerned, pension funds have two choices. First, they can directly own, and have management responsibility for, the properties in their portfolios. Alternatively, they can buy shares in mainly Zurich-based investment vehicles. In the first case, pension funds require staff with the relevant expertise along with the knowledge of property markets. Investments have a regional focus and are assessed internally by the funds. In the second case, pension funds are merely investors and investment appraisals and comparisons are made on the basis of market criteria such as yield, diversification in relation to risk and liquidity. In this case, property investments focus solely on the country’s main urban areas.Finance Industry, Territorial Economy, Swiss Pension Funds

This article examines the approaches adopted by various schools of economic thought towards dealing with space and time. Each school has its own approach, though their treatment of time and space has generally been implicit. These spatial and temporal factors determine, right from the start, the way both reality and the explanatory frameworks which are supposed to take account of that very reality are looked at. The purpose of examining these various economic approaches is to clarify the view of space and time that is reflected in their premises. These ultimately determine the sometimes radical differences that emerge when looking at various theoretical traditions. In the first section, a number of contributors to equilibrium theory (from Walras to Krugman) are brought together. The approaches they use are characterised by their historical relationships with physics and mathematics. In short, their view is that space is exogenous, unchangeable, objective and abstract. The second section concentrates on schools of thought rather than specific contributors. Institutional and territorial economics have developed different conceptions of space and time, drawing their inspiration from social science and complexity theory. Space and time are always concrete. Space is marked by contrasts: it is both specific and generic, given and constructed, endogenous and exogenous. Finally, in the context of territorial economics and complexity theory, the part played by those engaged in research and modelling is addressed in terms of the way space is constructed.

The most significant structural change undergone by the British and Swiss economies during the past 25 years (1975-2000) is indisputably the development of their financial systems. From this point of view, the two countries show a number of similarities: the presence of one or more international financial place(s), large enterprises which expanded greatly on the international front during that period, the decline of their industrial regions, a monetarist-type monetary policy that involved floating their currency on the external market, a more or less enthusiastic policy of liberalizing their financial markets, etc. In these two countries, the development of international financial centres and the decline of the industrial regions took place in parallel. The question that remains is: are these developments linked? There have been many studies dealing with the relationship between finance and industry. But this article is original in that it approaches the question principally from the spatial angle (by contrasting the evolution of the financial centres with that of the other regions) and from the sectoral angle (by making a distinction between finance and the industrial activities).