*AAG 2019 CFP: Post-Crisis Fiscal Geographies: A Retrospective on the 10th Anniversary of the Global Financial Crisis Organizers: Kelly Kay (UCLA) and Renee Tapp (Harvard University)Sponsored by: Political Geography Specialty GroupTen years ago when the Lehman Brothers bank collapsed, tax and fiscal policies became implicated in the crisis that spread across the United States to Europe (Wainwright 2013). National governments drew on taxpayer money and other fiscal levers to prop up failing banks and financial institutions, and to intervene in bankrupt cities. Just one short decade later, US President Donald Trump announced record quarterly GDP growth of 4.2% (BEA 2018); while cities once teetering on the edge of fiscal calamity, seem to be emerging as the new icons of revitalization (Kinney 2016, Peck and Whiteside 2016, Akers 2015, Davidson and Ward 2014). Economists speculate that recent growth and reinvestment in the US can be attributed to monetary and fiscal policy decisions like cuts to corporate and individual tax rates and very low interest rates (McKinsey Global Analytics 2018, Blinder and Zandi 2010). Despite the overall total growth in the economy, the post-crisis period has been rocky. Since 2008, scholars have drawn attention to record levels of inequality (Federal Reserve 2017), tax evasion and accumulation (Aalbers 2018), emergent social movements (Fields 2017), and the concentration of profits in the same sectors of the US economy where the crisis originated ten years ago (Christophers, Leyshon, and Mann 2017, Ashton and Christophers 2016). In this retrospective session, we focus on the "fiscal geographies" (Tapp and Kay forthcoming) of the crisis and recovery. We seek to bring together scholars working on a broad range of topics related to post-crisis political economy in order to better evaluate the impacts of state fiscal policies and financial regulations, across all scales of governance. We invite papers that make empirical engagements or theoretical interventions that consider how states and capital have come to be differentially oriented since the 2008 crisis. Possible themes include but are not limited to: - New geographies of financial bubbles - Case studies of companies or industries that received bailouts- Geographies of wealth concentration and debt - Legacies of austerity - Restructuring of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector since the crisis- Stock buybacks, regulations, or other innovations in banking- Reconfigurations of nature-state-society relations since the crash- New/changing patterns of property-led accumulation- Urban governance and fiscal balance sheets (accounting systems, interest rates, credit scores, service delivery) - Impacts of particular tax policies, regulation, and legislation on accumulation, including those that span the urban/rural divide- Gendered or raced experiences of post-crisis state or economic institutionsPlease send 250 word abstracts to kelly...@ucla.edu <kelly...@ucla.edu> and ct...@gsd.harvard.edu <ct...@gsd.harvard.edu> by October 15, 2018. Depending on interest, we may also put together a panel on this topic. If you would be interested in participating in an alternative capacity (paper discussant, panelist), please feel free to reach out. References:*
*Akers, J. 2015. Emerging City Market. Environment and Planning A 47(1): 1842-1858. Aalbers, M. 2018. Financial geography I: Geographies of tax. Progress in Human Geography: 0309132517731253.Ashton, P., and Christophers, B. 2018. Remaking mortgage markets by remaking mortgages: US housing finance after the crisis. Economic Geography 94(3): 238-258.Blinder, A.S. and Zandi, M.M. (2010). How The Great Recession Was Brought to an End. Moody's. https://www.princeton.edu/~blinder/End-of-Great-Recession.pdf <https://www.princeton.edu/~blinder/End-of-Great-Recession.pdf>US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). 2018. US Economy at a Glance. https://www.bea.gov/news/glance <https://www.bea.gov/news/glance>Christophers, B., Leyshon, A., and Mann, G. 2017. Money and Finance After the Crisis: Taking Critical Stock. Money and Finance After the Crisis: Critical Thinking for Uncertain Times, 1-40.Davidson, M. and Ward, K., 2014. ‘Picking up the pieces’: austerity urbanism, California and fiscal crisis. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 7(1): 81-97.Federal Reserve. 2017. Changes in US Family Finances from 2013 to 2016: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf <https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf>Fields, D. 2017. Urban struggles with financialization. Geography Compass 11(11): e12334.Kinney, R. 2016. Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McKinsey Global Analytics. 2018. A Decade After the Global Financial Crisis: What Has (and Hasn't) Changed? https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/a-decade-after-the-global-financial-crisis-what-has-and-hasnt-changed <https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/a-decade-after-the-global-financial-crisis-what-has-and-hasnt-changed>Peck, J., and Whiteside, H. 2016. Financializing Detroit. Economic Geography 92(3): 235-268.Tapp, R., and K. Kay (forthcoming). Fiscal Geographies: “Placing” Taxation in Urban Geography. Wainwright, T. 2013. Which crisis? The need to understand spaces of (non) tax in the economic recovery. Environment and Planning A 45(5): 1008-1012.*
