Financial Growth and Geography
Post-GFC there has been an upsurge in research into money and finance within geography; yet this subfield was long considered peripheral to economic geography.
Financial geography should engage with economic, geopolitical and urban geographies as well as digital/cultural geographies as well as (uneven) development geographies.
The Geography of Growth
Common wisdom suggests that environmental conditions, like climate, can significantly impact economic outcomes. Therefore, current studies seek to quantify this effect.
However, most studies focus on national data and it can be challenging to distinguish geographical from non-geographical influences. G-Econ Database helps eliminate this difficulty by concentrating on grid cells within countries.
These new analyses demonstrate how geography matters significantly. A comparison of county GDP growth rates across the United States highlights this truth, while an expansion of the sunbelt provides another dramatic example: domestic migration patterns were supercharged by remote work opportunities to the southward direction, leading to boom communities such as The Villages in central Florida as well as an unprecedented construction boom across much of America South.
These findings help shed light on why some countries flourish while others falter, and call for further research on forward-looking dynamic models with forward momentum. Furthermore, efforts should also investigate how institutions impact these trends.
The Geography of Change
Over the past decade, an increasing number of economists have begun including geographic factors in their analyses of economic development. Such studies compare countries and regions to determine whether differences in per capita output can be explained primarily by geography or national institutions.
Recent studies of geographic influences on economic development have been limited in their examination, due to an emphasis on output growth or levels. While this approach makes sense in terms of government policies and domestic economies, it makes it more difficult to comprehend time-invariant effects of geography on economic activity.
G-Econ provides a laboratory for estimating the effects of geography on per capita output and population density. The table below presents estimates for tropical Africa, industrial Europe, other low-latitude regions such as Greenland Australia Russia and the US in terms of relative output/population advantages and disadvantages of geography.
The Geography of Uncertainty
Uncertainty is at the core of this collection of papers, as contributors investigate its effect on geographic relations to produce outcomes and socio-ecological possibilities. Furthermore, uncertainties alter essential themes in critical human geography – scale, spatiality, power relations and place relationships – giving contributors new perspectives to consider when considering human geography as an academic discipline.
Numerous authors highlight how uncertainties intersect with and compound existing fault lines of inequality. In particular, they demonstrate how decisions about uncertain yield expectations in real estate and financial markets may have different ramifications depending on their respective contexts of use.
Uncertainty also challenges what we consider knowable and quantifiable, as evidenced in Nari Senanayake’s paper on chronic kidney disease in Sri Lanka (CKDu). He examines attempts by locals to neutralize biomedical uncertainty about this mysterious kidney condition by employing practices which produce functional yet counterproductive knowledge practices at different scales – challenging the dominant assumptions of Western bureaucratic rationality, scientific management practices and educational pedagogy while opening new avenues of investigation at the intersection between science, society and education research.
The Geography of Opportunity
Publishing this inaugural issue marks a pivotal moment in financial geography’s emergence since the Global Financial Crisis. Financial geography’s rise can be linked to increasing significance of finances relative to development, globalisation, inequality, sustainability and natural environment issues.
Research by this institution has also refuted claims that globalisation and financial technology are diminishing geography’s importance. Geographics remains very relevant due to five reasons – unspoiled landscapes of specific places, transport needs for physical goods, local energy support requirements, specific client requirements as well as highly specialised information networks – still making geography relevant.
As financial geography matures and expands, three challenges present themselves to it. Financial geography must develop deeper dialogues with scholars who specialize in physical geography topics like natural hazards and risks, climate change and biodegradation (e.g. Hillier & Van Meeteren’s Citation2023); it also needs to maintain its ability to bridge epistemological divides that mar geographic knowledge while striving towards synthesis across seemingly incommensurable gaps.
