 Financial Centers Between Centralization and VirtualizationChapter 13 in The Changing Geography of Banking and Finance, 2009, pp 277-294 from Springer Abstract: Abstract The chapter examines the current and future role of European financial centers. The “virtualization” of space leads to the weakening of the benefits from agglomeration through the widespread use of information and communication technology. Virtualization works well, however, only for standardized information, like stock prices, but not for complex information requiring constant interpretation. For the latter, face-to-face contacts cannot be substituted, and thus, financial centers are here to stay. Nevertheless, it is not clear how many financial centers will survive. The chapter finds strong competition between Europe’s first-tier financial center London and second-tier centers, such as Frankfurt and Paris. Due again to the nature of information, national centers will remain serving opaque domestic businesses. Thus, there is little competition between second-tier centers which are caught in between centralization – toward London – and regionalization toward the most opaque businesses within their respective countries. Keywords: Stock Exchange; Spatial Proximity; Complex Information; Foreign Bank; Agglomeration Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-0-387-98078-2_13 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-98078-2_13 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Springer Books from Springer |
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