In December 2018, we organised a two-day workshop on “How to Conceptualise Financialisation in Developing and Emerging Economies? Manifestations, Drivers and Implications” at Girton College, University of Cambridge. The idea behind this event was to move away from a significant focus on developed economies when discussing financialisation phenomena and give more space to find out what is happening in developing and emerging economies (DEEs). Existing studies on DEEs have often focussed on particular case studies. Investigating empirical aspects already observed in developed economies, There have been both limited attempts to engage with the concepts and perspectives from the Global South and at systematising the literature and in analysing particularities of DEEs.
The workshop was a success in many fronts, such as attendance, quality of papers and exchange of ideas. Five roundtables attempted to encompass key crucial aspects of this discussion in the context of DEEs, namely, Financialisation and The Global Economy, Financialisation and Production, Variegated Financialisation, Financialisation and the State, and Micro-financialisation. This was complemented by two excellent plenaries approaching both the theorisation of financialisation in DEEs and the avenues for future research. See the programme here.
Questions related, for example, to the specific features of financialisation in DEEs and the roles of different institutions, policies and locational factors in shaping this process sparked the room, leaving all of us wishing for more. It would be fair to argue that at the end of the workshop we all felt that there is a lot of strong scholarship addressing these issues from different angles – luckily, emerging not only from economics but also political economy, sociology, geography among other disciplines. We indeed achieved our goal, which was to spur conceptual discussions of whether, and if so how, financialisation is distinct in DEEs.
The next step is to consolidate this conversation – and to broaden it beyond the confines of the workshop. We wish to bring together the many pieces of this discussion from across the world to set the ground for future studies and research. That is why we have an open call for papers in the Cambridge Journal of Economics. We invite contributions on the theoretical and empirical specificities of the manifestations, drivers and implications of financialisation in the DEEs. We are particularly interested in papers that make a conceptual contribution to the literature, and we encourage interdisciplinary work, both in theory and method.
The deadline for paper submission is the 31st of August 2020. See more details here.
Developing Economics 