| dc.description.abstract | The paper examines the emergence of financialization (especially the real estate) as one of the key features of contemporary neoliberal capitalism in post-socialist Serbia and in some selected countries of the CEE and SEE region in the period after the global economic and financial crisis in 2008. Financialization as the leading mechanism of the global neoliberal paradigm plays a significant role in economic development, the functioning of societies, and transformation of spatial development patterns. Despite being a global phenomenon, neoliberal market principles have been implemented differently across various institutional landscapes and political narratives. High government structures of the post-socialist societies wholeheartedly accept neoliberal concepts such as global development visions (instead of long-term goals!) and capital as the only driving force (without e.g., social and market-cum-planning forces). The transitional changes within the social, political and institutional setting of the CEE and SEE region enabled the conditions for nesting foreign direct investments/FDI (also through Real Estate Investment Trusts/REITs), predominantly in the services sector and urban real estate (housing, commercial and office space). The financialisation of the built environment is a dominant and the fastest-growing economic activity that uses new financial instruments and products (such as mortgages, credit cards, financial derivatives, securities, options, tax increment financing, etc.). This process launched through financial capital (by the intermediation of financial instruments and new financial products, and its securization by state) and various institutions is a general pattern of spatial-economic development transformations. Financialization takes place mainly through investment in residential and commercial properties in urban areas, i.e. usually through extracting and market monetization of the values of urban commons and/or territorial capital, mainly in favour of a financial oligarchy. With this in mind, financialization under the patronage of post-socialist mature and some "immature" states and market institutions, often unable to neutralize the predatory and speculative tendencies (e.g. eroding of public goods, public properties and finances, money laundering, fiscal evasion, etc.) is explored.
Research on financialization is relatively scarce in post-socialist European countries, while in Serbia there is a complete absence of research on this issue. A comprehensive approach to financialization from a multiscalar perspective is applied, shedding light on this process through an empirical analysis at the Serbian national level and comparing it with the selected post-socialist countries of CEE and SEE in post-crisis period (from 2008 to 2021). More specifically, a synoptic approach would be applied to analyse and compare the financialization at the national level using available indicators. The empirical research is based on three steps: first, on choosing different financialization dimensions according to mainstream the teachings of neoclassical economics (emphasizing: the transition from a bank-based to a market-based financial system; foreign financial inflows; financialization of non-financial corporations; financialization of housing, households, and urban financialization); second, on identifying or creating financialization indicators of selected dimensions/domains based on available (and comparable) data from the relevant international sources and statistics (such as the Bank of International Settlements, Eurostat and CEIC); and third, on the comparison of financialization in Serbia and similar CEE and SEE countries according to the financialization indicators within the previously selected dimensions/domains of financialization. The comparative financialization survey included six CEE countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and six SEE countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia), as well as average indicator values for the European Union. The findings point to close connection and the intertwining of global financial and macro-economic trends and the spatial-urban development processes. It is necessary to look at all the consequences of further galloping boom of the real estate market (followed by speculative bubbles, collapse, bailouts, debt growth and potential systemic crises) from a social, economic and spatial-urban perspective. In addition to a potential contribution in responding to the current gap in financialization research in some post-socialist countries (including Serbia), some basic recommendations would be given to public policy-makers (related to macroeconomic, monetary, credit, fiscal, developmental, housing and urban policy, planning and governance). Institutional changes are necessary in order to redirect the financialization process to more socially acceptable and resilient economic and spatial-urban development, better adjustment/ harmonization of financial capital standards in urban development and enable a broad dialogue between different/particular financial interests. | sr |
