DOCSLIB.ORG

Master Reference

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Master Reference Master City-states as international financial centres: towards a political economy of the city-state LEITNER, Gabriel Abstract City-States as International Financial Centres – Towards a Political Economy of the City-State. Reference LEITNER, Gabriel. City-states as international financial centres: towards a political economy of the city-state. Master : Univ. Genève, 2020 Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:145895 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. 1 / 1 University of Geneva – Geneva School of Social Sciences Master of Arts in Political Economy of Capitalism Master thesis City-States as International Financial Centres Towards a Political Economy of the City-State Gabriel Leitner August 2020 Supervisor: Professor Thomas Sattler 1 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3 Research question ...................................................................................................................... 3 Literature review ........................................................................................................................ 5 Conceptualisation ...................................................................................................................... 8 City-State ............................................................................................................................................ 8 Financial Centres: International, Domestic or Global? ...................................................................... 9 Hypothesis ................................................................................................................................ 10 Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 13 Data ................................................................................................................................................... 14 Observations ............................................................................................................................ 14 Analysis .................................................................................................................................... 18 Hinterland theory .............................................................................................................................. 19 Hegemonic cycle theory ................................................................................................................... 20 Theoretical mechanism ..................................................................................................................... 20 Types oF city-states ........................................................................................................................... 22 London ......................................................................................................................................................... 24 Swiss city-cantons ........................................................................................................................................ 25 Remnants of the British Empire ................................................................................................................... 26 European micro-states .................................................................................................................................. 27 Asian Entrepôts ............................................................................................................................................ 27 Petro-States ................................................................................................................................................... 28 The tropics .................................................................................................................................................... 29 City-States? .................................................................................................................................................. 30 Historical city-states: Repubbliche marinare & Low countries ................................................................... 30 Illustrating the domestic – international framework: The cases of Germany and London ..... 31 Outlook ..................................................................................................................................... 33 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 33 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 35 Annex ........................................................................................................................................ 38 2 Introduction Financial centres have always been at the centre of capitalism. They constitute its pulsating heart, pumping money through the economy and regulating these financial flows. According to Woo, modern international financial centres represent the convergence of three contemporary developments in the global economy: Globalisation, financialization and agglomeration.1 As such, these centres are the epitome of capitalism in our times. However, despite a new quality of globalisation and financialization, the underlying mechanisms of these developments are hardly new. Fernand Braudel writes about the phenomenon of financialization, which occurred as far back as in 18th century Amsterdam and renaissance Italy: “…the city’s [Amsterdam] social oligarchy became inward-looking, withdrawing as in Venice and Genoa, from active trade and tending to turn into a society of rentier investors…”2 As for globalisation and international trade, Fratianni and Spinelli show that “commerce and international trade were the key” to the success of the thalassocratic city-states Venice and Genoa.3 As the following pages will show, it is no coincidence, that it was the Italian renaissance cities, as well as the Dutch United Provinces which gave birth to the leading European financial centres of their time. These examples illustrate the historically important role of financial centres, especially in trade. Given this relevance of financial centres for our understanding of the economy in the past, present and future, it is worth examining why some cities emerge as leading regional or even global centres, while others do not. While existing literature often focusses on specific cases, the question remains whether one can identify a general pattern, as well as common characteristics and circumstances that lead to the emergence of a financial centre. What can explain the fact that big countries, like the United States and China, have important financial centres, as well as small countries like Singapore and Liechtenstein? Moreover, rich countries, like Switzerland, Japan and Qatar host financial centres, as well as considerably less wealthy countries, such as China and Mauritius. All this leads to the starting question which gave birth to this paper and which sets the framework for the following pages: Why do some cities become important financial centres, while others do not? Research question Going back to the examples in the introduction, one can observe, albeit on a small sample set, a curious pattern. All mentioned illustrations, Genoa, Venice and the cities of the United Provinces and Dutch Republic were independent or autonomous cities and exhibited, to varying degrees, features of a city-state, rather than being part of an empire or nation-state. Venice, the Serenissima, emerged as a city in the 5th century AD and affirmed its independence from the Holy Roman Empire in 1177 when it hosted the reconciliation between Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III, as it was recognised as “neutral 1 Woo J.J. (2017), “3-in-1: Governing a Global Financial Centre”, World Scientific: p.4 2 Braudel F. (1984), “Civilisation and capitalism, 15th – 18th century: The perspective of the world”, Collins: pp.266 & 267 3 Fratianni M. & Spinelli F. (2007), “Did Genoa and Venice kick a financial revolution in the Quattrocento?”, Österreichische Nationalbank working papers: p.13 3 ground”.4 Later, it became the centre of its own thalassocratic empire, but it always kept the characteristics of a truly sovereign city-state. Genoa, on the other side of Northern Italy, was its fiercest commercial competitor until the two cities both fell prey to Napoleon Bonaparte, who ended their independence. The United Provinces, on the other hand, were “a cluster of city-states”5, which was controlled by Amsterdam and its merchants. Nowadays, clearly, the age of the city-state seems to lie in the distant past. The contemporary world and its politics are overwhelmingly dominated by countries, which are, at least nominally, nation-states. This Westphalian order seems to leave little to no political and geographical space for the ostensibly anachronistic phenomenon of sovereign cities. While this is certainly true for most parts of the world, as well as for traditional high politics, a look at the world of international finance offers a strikingly different perspective on the issue. The Global Financial Centres Index, published by British Think Tank Z/Yen and the China Development Institute, features at least
Load more

Recommended publications
  • GRI-Rapport 2016:2 Bank Management
    Gothenburg Research Institute GRI-rapport 2016:2 Bank Management Banks and their world view contexts Sten Jönsson © Gothenburg Research Institute All rights reserved. No part of this report may be repro- duced without the written permission from the publisher. Gothenburg Research Institute School of Business, Economics and Law at University of Gothenburg P.O. Box 600 SE-405 30 Göteborg Tel: +46 (0)31 - 786 54 13 Fax: +46 (0)31 - 786 56 19 E-post: [email protected] ISSN 1400-4801 Layout: Henric Karlsson Banks and their world view contexts By Sten Jönsson Gothenburg Research Institute (GRI) School of Business, Economics and Law University of Gothenburg Contents Introduction 8 1. Preliminaries 13 1.1. Theoretical orientation 13 1.2. What is a bank anyway? 15 1.3. The changing nature of arbitrage 16 1.4. A quick tour of the world views that set the stage for banking 18 2. Greed, arbitrage, and decency in action 22 2.1. Greed – the original sin! 22 2.2. An overview of wealth and the afterlife during the first centuries AD 24 3. Scholasticism – guiding individuals to proper use of their free will 26 4. The most prominent banks – watched by the scholastics 32 4.1. Medici 32 4.2. Fugger 37 5. Mercantilism – the origins of political economy and, consequently, of economic policy 42 5.1. The glory and decline of merchant banks 45 6. Neoliberalim started with the Austrian School 59 6.1. Modernism and crumbling empires 59 6.2. The context in which the Austrian school developed 61 6.3.
    [Show full text]
  • Silver Squelchers Twenty & Their Interesting Associates
    Silver Squelchers Twenty & Their Interesting Associates Investment Bankers in The Pilgrims Society #2 Take 32 seconds to hear what should be The Pilgrims theme music! “He spoke openly against the Society” (Line from “The Rifleman,” March 3, 1963) Presented July 2015 by Charles Savoie 1) John Charles Straton Jr. (1932---: Pilgrims Society as of undetermined) has info in the 2014 Who’s Who in the East, pages 1367-1368--- The December 21, 1907 New York Times, front page headline read, “Ruined Speculator Kills J.H. Oliphant Then Shoots Himself in the Brokerage Office of his Victim Who Dies at 2:00 AM Today, Fortune of $75,000 Gone” we read--- “James H. Oliphant, senior member of the Stock Exchange firm of James H. Oliphant Co., and one of the best-known brokers in this city, was shot, and mortally wounded in his office at 20 Broad Street yesterday afternoon by Dr. Charles A. Geiger of Beaufort, S.C., a ruined speculator, who for two years or more had been a customer of the Oliphant firm. Dr. Geiger then turned the revolver on himself and sent the bullet into his brain, dying instantly.” My “Pilgrims meter” tells me that Oliphant was a member, though he wasn’t a charter member as of January 1903--- The 2005 Who’s Who in America, page 3502, shows David Olyphant (note spelling variation) as a member of The Pilgrims. He was a Citibank executive, an officer of the English Speaking Union (direct Pilgrims subsidiary) and involved with the American Trust for the British Library. John Charles Straton Jr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Legitimacy of Credit Rating Agencies in the Bond Market
    The Legitimacy of Credit Rating Agencies in the Bond Market Hsueh Chen-hua Department of Sociology Tunghai University June 2017 A dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………...... I LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ………..…………………………………….. VI GLOSSARY……………………………………………………………………..... VII ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………..... VIII DECLARATION………………………………………………………………...... X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………… XI CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………….... 1 1.1 STORIES AFTER 2008 FINANCIAL CRISIS…………………………… 1 1.1.1 Settlements of Banks……………………………………………………….. 2 1.1.2 Aftermaths about Credit Rating Agencies..………………………………… 6 1.1.3 Settlements of Credit Rating Agencies…….……...………………………... 10 1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS……………………………………………….... 17 1.3 RESEARCH PURPOSES…………………………………………………... 18 1.4 POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS………………………………………..... 19 1.5 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS…………………………………………… 20 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………..... 21 2.1 GENERAL REVIEW………………………………………………………... 21 2.2 A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE………………………………………...... 25 2.3 MANIFESTATION OF THEORETICAL CONCEPTS..……………......... 31 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY……………………………………………… 36 I 3.1 CASE STUDY METHOD…………………………………………………… 37 3.2 CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS……………………………………... 38 3.3 INTERVIEWS……………………………………………………………...... 39 CHAPTER 4: FROM COMMERCIAL TO FINANCIAL CREDIT………… 41 4.1 THE FORMATION OF CREDIT………………………………………….. 41 4.1.1 The Meaning of Credit……………………………………………………… 41 4.1.2 Credit between Fifteenth and Eighteenth
    [Show full text]
  • CASE2 Barings Bank 2
    Barings Bank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barings_Bank History Barings had a long and storied history. In 1802 , it helped finance the Louisiana Purchase , despite the fact that Britain was at war with France , and the sale had the effect of financing Napoleon 's war effort. Technically the United States did not purchase Louisiana from Napoleon. Louisiana was purchased from the Baring brothers and Hope & Co. The payment for the purchase was made in US bonds, which Napoleon sold to Barings at a discount of 87 1/2 per each $100. As a result, Napoleon received only $8,831,250 in cash for Louisiana. Alexander Baring , working for Hope & Co., conferred with the French Director of the Public Treasury François Barbé-Marbois in Paris , went to the United States to pick up the bonds and took them to France. Later daring efforts in underwriting got the firm into serious trouble through overexposure to Argentine and Uruguayan debt, and the bank had to be rescued by a consortium organized by the governor of the Bank of England , William Lidderdale , in the Panic of 1890 . While recovery from this incident was swift, it destroyed the company's former bravado. Its new, restrained manner made it a more appropriate representative of the British establishment, and the company established ties with King George V , beginning a close relationship with the British monarchy that would endure until Barings' collapse. The descendants of the original five male branches of the Baring family were all appointed to the peerage with the titles Baron Revelstoke , Earl of Northbrook , Baron Ashburton , Baron Howick of Glendale and Earl of Cromer .
    [Show full text]
  • The Class of 2012 I the KORN/FERRY INSTITUTE
    The Korn/Ferry Institute The Class of 2012 New NEDs in the FTSE 350 The Class of 2012 i THE KORN/FERRY INSTITUTE The Class of 2012 THE KORN/FERRY INSTITUTE Contents Page Foreword .................................................. i Executive summary ....................................... 1 The Class of 2012 .......................................... 3 Turnover is low on FTSE 350 boards ...................... 4 Primary career discipline ............................... 5 Gender balance ....................................... 7 Nationality and international experience .................. 9 Case study 1 ......................................... 10 NEDs 2.0? ........................................... 11 Case study 2 ......................................... 12 Career experience .................................... 13 Case study 3 ......................................... 15 Motivation to take a FTSE 350 NED role ................... 16 Case study 4 ......................................... 17 Induction processes ................................... 18 Expectations ......................................... 19 Conclusion .......................................... 20 The Class of 2012 biographies .............................. 22 THE CLASS OF 2012 i Foreword UK corporate governance is often something of an echo chamber, with articles from management and talent consultancies following one- another in procession, often saying much the same thing. As such, it is always interesting to come across something a little different, and credit to Korn/Ferry
    [Show full text]
  • The Baring Archive Is One of the Greatest Financial Archives in the World
    1 250th Anniversary Synposium Barings History and Archives The Baring Archive is one of the greatest financial archives in the world. As a record of the development of the international capital markets, it has no rival in the old or new financial centres of New York and Boston, Paris and Berlin, Tokyo and south east Asia. The Archive is only matched by the archives of Rothschilds in London and by those of Hopes in Amsterdam. It explains the development of international finance from the rudimentary practices of the 1760s, based essentially on bearer bonds and bills of exchange, through to the exotic products and their associated electronic wizardry of the late twentieth century. The Archive transcends every generation of information technology – passing from traditional leather bound ledgers and letter-books to innovative telegrams and machine generated accounts and ending up with databases and computer tapes. On the way it encountered and dealt with the paperwork explosion and saw off the paperless office. The fact that the archive has survived is in some senses extraordinary but in others entirely predictable. Accumulated in a seemingly unfillable basement that stretched far under Bishopsgate, it survived the likelihood of flood, fire and theft, of storage space shortages, of over exuberant space creators, of neglect linked to disinterest and, not least, of wastepaper drives and bombing in wartime. It also benefitted from good record keeping practices down the ages. But much more than this, it has survived on account of Barings’ deeply etched and enduring sense of itself, based for so long on the ownership and influence of its founding family.
    [Show full text]
  • The First Modern Bailout: the Barings Crisis of 1890 and the Bank of England
    The First Modern Bailout: The Barings Crisis of 1890 and the Bank of England Asha Banerjee Undergraduate Thesis Department of History Columbia University April 5, 2017 Seminar Advisor: Elisheva Carlebach Second Reader: Adam Tooze 2 Acknowledgements I am immensely grateful to Professor Adam Tooze, whose class on the financial crisis first inspired me to write a thesis on economic history with modern ramifications. Professor Tooze’s guidance and input, even before my topic was solidified, always encouraged me to think critically and improve my arguments. I would also like to thank Professors Susan Pedersen and Charly Coleman, who organized the History Department’s Presidential Global Innovation Fund, a grant which allowed me to research at the Bank of England and Baring Brothers Archive in London. Their comments and feedback at the earliest stage of this thesis were instrumental in taking the difficult leap into narrowing my topic. The graduate students working with the grant, Madeline Woker and Emily Rutherford, also aided me greatly. In the History Department, my seminar advisor Professor Elisheva Carlebach supported me throughout the entire process and taught me how to be a better writer and editor. To my friends, thank you so much for your comforting presence and for standing by me. Thank you to my dad, Ajeyo Banerjee, who read draft after draft, and understands my love for economic history more than anyone. Finally, thank you to my late grandmother, Joya Banerjee, who turned down a Columbia Fulbright to raise a family and whose copy of Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History I will always cherish.
    [Show full text]
  • Linen, Silver, Slaves, and Coffee: a Spatial Approach to Central Europe’S Entanglements with the Atlantic Economy
    Culture & History Digital Journal 4(2) December 2015, e020 eISSN 2253-797X doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2015.020 Linen, Silver, Slaves, and Coffee: A Spatial Approach to Central Europe’s Entanglements with the Atlantic Economy Klaus Weber European University Viadrina Große Scharrnstraße 59,D - 15230 Frankfurt (Oder) e-mail: [email protected] Submitted: 5 September 2014. Accepted: 1 June 2015 ABSTRACT: In German scholarship of the post-war period, the category of space was regarded as discredited, be- cause of its abuse during the Nazi period. This applies in particular to the 1970s and 80s, when novel approaches in social and economic history were developed. Research on proto-industrialisation, broadly examining its internal structures, did not take into account the export orientation of Central Europe’s early modern commodity production. At the same time, the expanding research on Europe’s Atlantic empires, including the trans-Atlantic slave trade, did hardly take notice of the manufactures from the Holy Roman Empire, distributed all around the Atlantic basin. This paper examines those conditions favouring German proto-industries which are relevant for a ‘spatial approach’ to the phenomenon. It also covers the late medieval beginnings of this process, in order to demonstrate the continuity of Central Europe’s entanglement with the Atlantic world. The paper further emphasises that any future research using spatial categories must be aware of the ideological contamination of the German term ‘Raum’ during the 19th and 20th century. The interlace of economic and social history with historiography demands a compilation from current and older research literature, some of it on different regions and subjects.
    [Show full text]
  • FOLLOW the YELLOW BRICK ROAD: from HARVARD to ENRON PART FIVE by Linda Minor © 2002 Permission to Reprint with Acknowledgement, Granted by Author
    NEWSMAKINGNEWS http://www.newsmakingnews.com/lm7,1,02,harvardtoenronpt5.htm NEWSMAKINGNEWS.COM FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD: FROM HARVARD TO ENRON PART FIVE by Linda Minor © 2002 Permission to reprint with acknowledgement, granted by author. The research I began into the career of Pug Winokur (whose resignation as chairman of Enron's finance committee and as director was delivered to Enron on June 6, 2002) has opened vistas of understanding I never anticipated. Following Winokur's connection to Zapata and to Penn Central, however, is helping to lay a path of bricks which is taking us ever closer to Oz--the invisible man behind the veil. The yellow-brick road is the historical path he took to establish his position of power. The only way to make him visible is to illuminate the path--to understand the history. We have to see the world whole in order to fix it. Oz operates a compartmentalized system where even the people involved in it do not fully understand how their individual roles fit into the overall scheme. It is therefore critical to connect all the bricks, to prevent participants in the scheme from rationalizing their complicity in the evil that has resulted from the control Oz exerts. We often refer to Oz as the Octopus. We know there is a brain there and a body, but we get confused by all the tentacles waving about in every direction. If we can just understand that the tentacles are connected, and if we can see the pattern that produces each tentacle, we will be able to bring Oz into better focus.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Annual Review
    The Rothschild Archive review of the year april 2006 to march 2007 THE ARCHIVE ROTHSCHILD • REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2006 – 2007 The Rothschild Archive review of the year april 2006 to march 2007 The Rothschild Archive Trust Trustees Baron Eric de Rothschild (Chair) Emma Rothschild Lionel de Rothschild Julien Sereys de Rothschild Ariane de Rothschild (from November 2006) Anthony Chapman Victor Gray Professor David Cannadine Staff Melanie Aspey (Director) Caroline Shaw (Archivist) Barbra Ruperto (Assistant Archivist) Lynne Orsatelli (Administrative Assistant, from June 2006) The Rothschild Archive, New Court, St Swithin’s Lane, London ec4p 4du Tel: +44 (0)20 7280 5874 Fax: +44 (0)20 7280 5657 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.rothschildarchive.org Company No. 3702208 Registered Charity No. 1075340 Front cover Li Hung Chang (1822‒1901) Chinese Viceroy, from an album of photographs of politicians, statesmen and religious leaders assembled by Emma, Lady Rothschild. (ral 000/848) The photograph of Li Hung Chang was sent to Nathaniel, 1st Lord Rothschild, by the sitter’s son together with a letter, dated 12 August 1896, explaining the inscription. In the letter he writes, I am sending you through Mr J H Lukach another photograph of His Excellency the Viceroy my father and hope you will be pleased with it. The characters upon the first one I sent you were written by His Excellency’s Private Secretary, but the one I am now sending you have been written by His Excellency’s own hand, those on the right hand side meaning The Chinese Ambassador Extraordinary Prime Minister Li Hung Chang presents to and on the left hand side Lord Rothschild of England, His Excellency’s age being added in this present year of the gift, viz., age 74.
    [Show full text]