Geographies of Financialization in Disarray: The Dutch Case in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The securitization crisis that started in mid-2007 has demonstrated that we are indeed living in a "global financial village" and are all subject to the vagaries of financialization. Nevertheless, the fallout from the credit crisis has not been homogeneous across space. That some localities were hit harder than others suggests that there are distinct geographies of financialization. Combining insights from the "varieties of capitalism" literature with those from the literature on "financialization studies," the article offers a first take on what may explain these different geographies on the basis of an informal comparison of the trajectories of financialization and their political repercussions in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands. The article ends with some reflections on how economic geography could be enriched by combining comparative studies on institutionalism and financialization, while its distinct research focus-detailed spatial analysis endowed with a well-developed sensitivity for geographic variegation-may help overcome the methodological nationalism of much comparative institutionalism. Copyright (c) 2010 Clark University.

The financialisation of rental housing: A comparative analysis of New York City and Berlin

“…Beyond mediating its effects (Engelen et al, 2010), national, state and local institutions enable financialization. To attract and retain capital, city and state governments often promote growth-oriented strategies that actively invite financial actorsÕ participation in local urban contexts (Weber, 2010).…”

“…Engelen et al, 2010 for an exception). Although todayÕs financial markets are globalized, variations persist in national and local housing markets, policies and regulations.…”

Reproducing the City of London's Institutional Landscape: The Role of Education and the Learning of Situated Practices by Early Career Elites

“…Developing such an understanding is particularly important in relation to the City because of concerns about how institutions underlie the continued geographical variegation in financialised capitalism (see Brenner et al, 2010;Clark and Wójcik, 2007;Dixon, 2011;Engelen et al, 2010;Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2009), and may also promote more or less sustainable forms of financial practice. Most notably, the institutional landscape of the City has been scrutinised because of the ways in which it may have facilitated and legitimated the calculative practices of elites that were central to the innovations in the boom of the 2000s that ultimately triggered the crisis of -8 (Tett 2010.…”

“…Indeed, both finance and professional services were at the heart of the period of rapid finance led growth and innovation in the City during the 2000s (Engelen et al, 2010;Froud et al, 2006). For example, the rise of securitisation saw the growing enrolment of professional services, notably corporate law firms, into the international financial system and a far greater role for elites with a finance rather than general management background (Faulconbridge and Muzio 2009;Zald and Lounsbury, 2010).…”

“…This suggestion is noteworthy in two ways. First, it suggests that education is an important way that the well-documented (see Brenner et al, 2010;Clark and Wójcik, 2007;Dixon, 2011;Engelen et al, 2010;Faulconbridge and Muzio, 2009) variegation within the international financial system is reproduced, and that education may therefore also have played an important role in facilitating and legitimating the cultures of work that underlay the financial boom of the 2000s in London and the ensuing crisis. In turn, second, the suggestion that education sustains London's institutionalised financial culture implies that attempts to reform the working practices and cultures in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis (for example, The Turner Review 2009) need to pay greater attention to the ways in which distinctive institutional landscapes emerge and are reproduced; the role of education in shaping the situated practices of elites being an exemplary reproductive mechanism that, when studied, reveals the wider importance of more thoroughly analysing the multi-level architectures through which institutionalised norms are not only sustained but also potentially challenged and changed.…”