Financial markets, business financing and the recent financial crisis

Financial markets and business financing are a neglected topic in economic geography. The recent financial crisis highlights the importance of these topics for understanding economic development and points to the complex relationship between structures and processes at various geographical scales. This introduction to the financial geography special issue provides background information on the development and the functioning of financial markets. The most prominent change of Germany's financial system is a growing capital market orientation resulting from internationalisation while the country at the same time is sustaining a distinctly regionalised financial structure - thus high-lighting the importance of multilevel analyses in financial geography. The contributions to the special issue are positioned and discussed against this background. The paper concludes with Outlining challenges and opportunities for economic and financial geography.