Periodic Reporting for period 4 - GEOFIN (Western banks in Eastern Europe: New geographies of financialisation)
Período documentado: 2021-06-01 hasta 2022-11-30
Objective A: To examine the ways in which post-socialist states in East-Central Europe have been inserted into the circuits of Western finance, what role state-socialist legacies played in the process and what implications this has for financialisation.
Objective B: To examine the ways in which Western banking groups managed to ‘penetrate’ post-socialist East-Central Europe, how this financial expansion differed from other contexts and how this is linked to wider processes of financialisation in Europe.
Objective C: To examine the ways in which households in post-socialist East-Central Europe have engaged with the new financial system, to what extent they experience financial exploitation and how this varies across different geographical settings.
Objective D: To advance theoretical understanding of financialisation based on a geographically-informed view, focusing on states, banks and households in the post-socialist context and the way in which these actors are interconnected with each other and with a wider political economy via ‘financial chains’ across different spatial scales (from local/regional and national to European and global) and through time.
Objective E: To assess the implications of the East-Central European financialisation experience for wider Europe and to develop alternative narratives of sustainable financial futures in Europe that would be compatible with the EU’s commitment to economic, social and territorial cohesion.
To date, the results have been disseminated via more than 10 journal articles, 13 Working Papers, 15 blogs and some 30 conference presentations, with more coming.
Among the key research outputs so far are the following articles in international peer-review journals:
Sokol, M (2022) Financialisation, central banks and ‘new’ state capitalism: The case of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. DOI 10.1177/0308518X221133114
Sokol, M. and Pataccini, L. (2021) Financialisation, regional economic development and the coronavirus crisis: a time for spatial monetary policy?, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society. DOI: 10.1093/cjres/rsab033
Pataccini, L. (2021) Europeanisation as a driver of dependent financialisation in East-Central Europe: insights from the Baltic states. New Political Economy, DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2021.1994542
Sokol, M. and Pataccini, L. (2020) Winners and losers in coronavirus times: Financialisation, financial chains and emerging economic geographies of the Covid-19 pandemic. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 111(3): 401-415. DOI: 10.1111/tesg.12433
Sokol, M. (2017) Financialisation, financial chains and uneven geographical development in Europe: Towards a research agenda. Research in International Business and Finance (RIBAF), Vol. 39, Part B, pp. 678-685. Invited contribution. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2015.11.007
1. Further elaboration of the concept of ‘financial chains’ as a device to study financialisation in its various forms and settings (Task 1).
2. Advancement of our understanding of financialisation of state in the post-socialist context (Task 2 / Objective A).
3. Advancement of our understanding of financialisation of Western banking groups in the post-socialist context (Task 3 / Objective B).
4. Advancement of our understanding of financialisation of households in the post-socialist context (Task 4 / Objective C) and beyond.
5. Advancement of our theoretical understanding of financialisation based on a geographically-informed view, focusing on states, banks and households in the post-socialist context (Task 5 / Objective D) and beyond.
6. Development of alternative narratives of sustainable financial futures in Europe that would be compatible with the EU’s commitment to economic, social and territorial cohesion (Task 6 / Objective E) and leading to positive climate action.