First meeting within CASE Graduate Workshops in Economics Series

Financial Geography and Law and Economics were the topics of a first meeting held within CASE Graduate Workshops in Economics Series that took place on Saturday, October 25th. 11 promising doctoral candidates resending currently in Poland discussed with the workshop leader, Tom Hashimoto from University of Oxford, different ways in which “geography” can be understood in economic terms.

For example, Tom argued that in case of Poland, two "geographies" exist - one being the "geography of economies" and the other – "geography of finance". In his view, due to the interconnection of trading activities the former is connected to Germany, while the latter is more connected to the UK since due to the high quality of regulatory regimes in Poland, as well as general environment in the banking sector, firms tend to seek capital through stock exchange rather than bank loans. That, in turn, makes Polish economy closer to the Anglo-Saxon model.

The idea was debated by the participants of the workshop, and alternative explanations and views were presented. Additionally, Tom gave a short introduction to the notion of place-based policies, which is going to be a topic of an upcoming conference co-organized by CASE, The Political-Economy of Place-Based Policies with a Focus on Special Economic Zones; to find out more, see the Call for Papers here.