International finance is now playing a pivotal role in the world economy. This economic activity is regarded as one of revitalizing industries for the future development of cities but is now becoming more concentrated in a handful of cities in the world. In geography, however, relatively little attention has been paid to international finance. Similarly, urban and regional economists have not concentrated their attention on finance, and monetary and financial economists have shown little interest in geographic location. There has been a growing concern for spatial awareness in social science, and this is demonstrated by the occurrence of studies focusing on the spatial aspects of international finance in the 1980s. The present paper is aiming to review these studies and propose some new research perspectives on this study area. Given the condition that it is almost impossible to trace international money flows at a global scale, the study of overseas activities of financial institutions, and the study of international financial centers are taken in this paper as geographical studies.The studies of overseas activities of financial institutions are somewhat led by theoretical studies, because it is difficult to conduct empirical research on individual financial institutions which try to conceal their customer information. The primary interests of theoretical research in the study of overseas activities of financial institutions are to investigate what kinds of activities they are doing at overseas offices, and why they establish those overseas offices. As to the former question, several-stage evolution models of the overseas activities of financial institutions are presented. In these models, it appears the activities of foreign financial institutions are approaching those of local financial institutions gradually. As to the latter question, there are several approaches such as noting the relationship with national industries, focusing on the differences of financial regulations among countries, and applying the theories of multi-national corporations. These theoretical studies, however, tend to be based on the concept of spatial dualism, i. e. home country and overseas, and pay little attention to the diversity of the regions overseas. Accordingly, theories related to the overseas activities of financial institutions often fail to grasp their spatial dynamics.Several researchers have tried to compare different countries using the data compiled by international organizations such as OECD, UN, World Bank, IMF, and BIS. Almost all of these studies use quantitative data such as the number of overseas branches or total amount of foreign transactions by countries. Very few attempts have been made comparing studies of several countries or areas with qualitative data, e. g. the differences in the overseas activities of financial institutions according to region. There are some qualitative studies, but they focus their attention on only one country; they are not comparative studies.Therefore, it is necessary to accumulate empirical case studies of overseas activities of financial institutions in many regions by geographers. The construction of spatial structure and spatial evolution models in the overseas activities of financial institutions using some geographically theoretical concepts such as Core-Periphery regions derived from World-system theory is necessary.Regarding the studies of international financial centers, they can be divided into two study perspectives: studies which deal with several centers and studies which mainly focus on a single center. In the first perspective, by comparing several centers, a great deal of effort has been made into understanding the historical development processes and the development factors of international financial centers, the typology and hierarchy of the centers, and the mutual relationships between the centers.
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Open Access
Aug 17, 2020
Rica Ivan + 1
