ABSTRACT
Global value chains are complex organizationally and geographically stretched arrangements for the production of commodities. Global value chain and global production network approaches employ a networks-optic that is well-attuned to representations of financial flows through networks. The territories of global finance are often viewed as hierarchical, and analyses often make a dualistic distinction between ‘global cities’, on the one hand, which have received the predominant share of attention, and ‘tax havens’ constituting offshore finance, on the other. Labor arbitrage is a key driver for unbundling and services offshoring in the finance industry. Academic research on the geographies of finance will require a new vocabulary to discuss the dynamics and roles of places within global financial networks beyond the problematic notion of the offshore. The viewpoint of the places of global finance as consisting of ‘global cities’ or ‘offshore jurisdictions’ ignores the function—and specialization—of some of the more generic ‘regions’ for global financial networks.
