Paweł Węgrzyn

Abstract

The primary goal of the work detailed in this article has been to articulate the theoretical frameworks of financial geography, as an essential branch of economic geography dedicated to the understanding of the spatial dimensions to financial systems and processes. Financial geography explores the spatial configurations of financial activities (including capital flows), the operation of financial markets, and the strategic significance of financial centres. By way of a far‑reaching review or the relevant literature, this article seeks to consolidate, and engage in the critical examination of, the various theoretical approaches now seen to be central to the field in question.

The core theoretical perspectives structuring the relevant discussion are seen to be financialisation, global financial networks (GFN), financial chains, and global financial centres. Each related theory offers distinctive insights, and emphasises the varying scales of analysis.

Financialisation, as the first significant theoretical approach discussed, addresses the increasing role of financial markets and actors in shaping broader economic and social structures (Węgrzyn, 2024). It examines how financial logic and priorities have penetrated various sectors, influencing housing markets, corporate behaviour, and government policies. Financialisation highlights uneven spatial impacts, such as urban displacement and intensified regional disparities. For instance, the role of mortgage‑backed securities in the subprime crisis vividly illustrates how local housing markets in the United States became entangled with global financial flows, generating severe regional consequences.

Global financial networks (GFN) constitute another critical theoretical perspective, with the emphasis here on the complex connectivity among global financial centres and market actors. Rather than viewing financial centres in isolation, the GFN perspective underscores their interconnectedness through financial and informational flows. Financial networks enable scholars to map the hierarchy of global cities and highlight shifting geographies of financial power. London’s post‑Brexit repositioning within Europe’s financial networks illustrates how changes in regulatory and institutional landscapes reshape global financial connectivity, influencing the distribution of economic power among major cities (Iliopoulos et al., 2024).

The concept of financial chains provides further analytical clarity by mapping the specific sequences of financial interactions connecting diverse geographical locations and entities, from individual households through to multinational banks (Sokol, 2017). This approach allows researchers to trace the ways in which value, risks and costs circulate across geographical and institutional boundaries, often illuminating profound inequalities embedded in these financial flows. Studies examining the European debt crisis, particularly as it impacts southern European economies and northern European financial institutions, serve to exemplify the utility of this analytical framework in revealing the spatial dynamics of financial risks and their political‑economic implications.

Global financial‑centres theory focuses explicitly on prominent nodes in the global financial landscape, such as New York, London, Frankfurt, and Hong Kong. This framework investigates the conditions and factors determining a city’s ascendancy as a financial centre, including regulatory environments, historical and institutional contexts, and connectivity infrastructures (Sassen, 2001). It also addresses challenges faced by financial centres, such as political instability or shifts in regulatory frameworks – with these seen to influence their international competitiveness and attractiveness from the point of view of global financial actors.

This study’s supplementary bibliometric analysis reveals that it is financialisation and financial centres that have attracted the most‑significant scholarly attention, while global financial networks and (in particular) financial chains represent newer approaches only so far explored to a more‑limited extent.

The review identifies a notable research gap, highlighting the lack of comprehensive theoretical treatments integrating the varied aforementioned perspectives on financial geography. An addressing of this gap is thus essential to any fostering of deeper understanding as to how spatial factors influence financial dynamics at different scales, and how the processes in question may reshape spatial structures at global, national, urban and local levels.

Our theoretical synthesis presented here can thus be seen as underscoring the importance of the multiple analytical scales being integrated, so as to offer a full grasp of the complexities that contemporary financial processes manifest. Collectively, the theoretical frameworks reviewed can be viewed as providing robust analytical lenses through which to understand the spatiality of finance, with facilitation also offered when it comes to further research into such emerging financial phenomena as green finance, fintech, and shifting global economic power structures.

Keywords: financial geography, financial chains, financialisation, global financial centers, global financial network

Paweł Węgrzyn [pwegrz@sgh.waw.pl], Szkoła Główna Handlowa, Katedra Geografii Ekonomicznej

Citation

APA: Węgrzyn, P. (2025). Od finansjalizacji do globalnych sieci finansowych – teoretyczne podstawy geografii finansów. Przegląd Geograficzny, 97(2), 187-208. https://doi.org/10.7163/PrzG.2025.2.4
MLA: Węgrzyn, Paweł. "Od finansjalizacji do globalnych sieci finansowych – teoretyczne podstawy geografii finansów". Przegląd Geograficzny, vol. 97, no. 2, 2025, pp. 187-208. https://doi.org/10.7163/PrzG.2025.2.4
Chicago: Węgrzyn, Paweł. "Od finansjalizacji do globalnych sieci finansowych – teoretyczne podstawy geografii finansów". Przegląd Geograficzny 97, no. 2 (2025): 187-208. https://doi.org/10.7163/PrzG.2025.2.4
Harvard: Węgrzyn, P. 2025. "Od finansjalizacji do globalnych sieci finansowych – teoretyczne podstawy geografii finansów". Przegląd Geograficzny, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 187-208. https://doi.org/10.7163/PrzG.2025.2.4