Producing investment space: the International Finance Corporation and the geofinancial power network

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as an important institutional driver of the financialisation process in developing and emerging economies. An institutional analysis of the Corporation’s development objectives and corporate directives is provided, focussing on its investments, financial institution building operations and its production of new investment spaces, as exemplified in its engineering of ‘emerging markets’ as a novel financial asset class. The IFC is conceptualised as operating within the geofinancial power network, a transnational sociotechnical system that helps demonstrate how the Corporation facilitates financialisation spatially from global centres of power to peripheral spaces in developing and emerging economies.