5 - Jessie Poon: International Trade and Geographies of Finance

Summary

Introduction

Jessie Poon is a pioneering economic geographer whose early research into international trade and regional agreements in Asia plays a vital role in shaping economic geography research on Asia. Her research on trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), transnational corporations (TNCs), and Asia's innovation and technological shifts has shaped debates on state– firm relationships, capital markets, technological innovation and regional development for almost three decades. The influence of her work has been felt beyond economic geography in diverse fields such as international political economy, economics and regional science. Drawing from her quantitative training and research experience, Poon also contributed to significant debates on the changing roles and potential of quantitative methods in geography. Other than international trade and corporate geographies, a major strand of Poon's research focuses on geographies of finance, particularly on the governance of capital markets, Islamic finance and offshore jurisdictions. Through archival research and interviews with finance workers, lawyers, religious bodies, policy makers and regulators, she unpacked the complex ways in which new forms of financial and legal spaces are carved out for Islamic finance and special purpose vehicles in offshore jurisdictions. These have important implications for how we study new forms and spatialities of knowledge production and regulatory power in economic geography, as well as legal geography and postcolonial debates.

This chapter highlights four strands of Poon's contributions to economic geographical analysis and the ways in which they have advanced the field and shaped contemporary debates. These are (1) international trade and regionalism, (2) TNCs and regional development, (3) economic geographies of finance and (4) quantitative methods. The final section concludes with some reflections on the impacts of her research and wider scholarly engagements on the development of economic geography.

Geographies of international trade and regionalism

Poon's early research on international trade and regional agreements played a vital role in shaping economic geography research on Asia during a period of rapid economic expansion in the 1990s and early 2000s. In studying how the flows of goods and services shape economic growth and development, and shifting power dynamics between firms and state actors, these contributed to empirical understandings of the growing role of Asia in interregional and intra-regional trade, as well as conceptual debates regarding regionalism. Insights from these studies went on to inform her subsequent research on FDI flows, the roles of TNCs and Asia's innovation and technological shifts.