Atlas of Finance<\/strong>: Mapping the Global Story of Money<\/strong> by Dariusz Wojcik<\/strong> and co-authors<\/strong> is a visual exploration of global finance, blending history, geography, economics and politics across a diverse selection vignettes.<\/em> Despite noting some political biases<\/em>, James Herndon<\/strong> finds that its extensive research and <\/em> innovative visualisation techniques make it a valuable resource for students, educators and seasoned scholars alike.<\/em><\/p>\n Atlas of Finance: Mapping the Global Story of Money.<\/em><\/strong> Dariusz Wojcik, Panagiotis Iliopoulos, Stefanos Ioannou, Liam Keenan, Julien Migozzi, Timothy Monteath, Vladimir Pazitka, Morag Torrance and Michael Urban. Illustrated by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti. Designed by Oliver Uberti. Yale University Press. 2024.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n While W\u00f3jcik and his team write at a level accessible to any fresher, almost every page offers some novel fact likely unknown to the erudite <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This coffee table book surveys commerce, economics, and politics across eighty vignettes, each with a striking illustration and a brief introduction to its subject. And those pages cover, well, nearly everything: from Sumerian cuneiform<\/a> to SPACs<\/a>, from Potosi<\/a> to Premier League, from cowry shells<\/a> to cryptocurrency. While the book emphasises the UK in general and London in particular, it ranges as far afield as Cape Town and Vancouver. The timeline stretches from Bronze Age Mesopotamia to the present with subjects just as diverse: from the beneficent legacy of the common law, to pollution in the Baltic, to venture capital-funded satellites. It runs the gamut of financial acronyms, touching on M&As, the LME<\/a>,\u00a0 MFIs<\/a> and a dozen more, besides.\u00a0<\/p>\n Educators tasked with imparting the grammar of graphics<\/a> could build a syllabus from these pages: a chord diagram<\/a> to reveal the distribution of securities underwriting, a Sankey plot<\/a> to track the ill-gotten gains from a bank robbery, or a treemap<\/a> for the geography of bitcoin mining. Lest students get carried away, traditional visualisations have their place: a simple heatmap matrix more than suffices to capture home country bias<\/a> in investment. Pie charts, population pyramids, and candlestick plots<\/a> all serve their purpose. Obviously this \u201catlas\u201d makes ample use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)<\/a>, but even the humble scatter plot has its moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n Financial innovation enabled the effective allocation of cost from lost cargo under the Medici in the 17th<\/sup> century, and later the pooling of risk in France under the Sun King. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n While W\u00f3jcik and his team write at a level accessible to any fresher, almost every page offers some novel fact likely unknown to the erudite: like the Roman origins of the adage that corruption always leaves a trail (\u201cfollow the money\u201d, i.e., sequere pecuniam<\/em>), the origin of world\u2019s first sovereign wealth fund (founded by the state of Texas in 1854), or states with a surprising proclivity for levying international sanctions (Norway). Along the way the authors touch lightly on financial minutiae like the shortcomings of Value-at-Risk<\/a>, the technology behind high-frequency trading, or the precarious state of defined-benefit pensions<\/a>. The ample bibliography makes evident the work it took to unearth so many nuggets.\u00a0<\/p>\n An introduction to short selling compares the practice to a magician\u2019s trick, instead of, say, pointing out how it incentivises market participants to uncover fraud. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The book spotlights triumphs of the market, both historic and contemporary, throughout. Europe\u2019s Age of Discovery relied on more than superior shipbuilding and weapons. Financial innovation enabled the effective allocation of cost from lost cargo under the Medici in the 17th<\/sup> century, and later the pooling of risk in France under the Sun King. Travelling for work still matters today: one section charting the flow of remittances makes clear the mutually beneficial results of migrant labour for all countries involved, but especially the very poorest like Haiti and South Sudan. Further up the development ladder, the denizens of Bengaluru have enriched themselves by providing outsourcing services to firms the world over.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite these success stories, the book often downplays the private sector. At one point the authors state that \u201cinvestors have much to learn from academics, and certainly not just from economists.\u201d True, but academics writing about finance might benefit just as much by considering the views of professionals working the field. An introduction to short selling compares the practice to a magician\u2019s trick, instead of, say, pointing out how it incentivises market participants to uncover fraud<\/a>. Their explanation of initial public offering (IPO) pre-placements deems the practice \u201ca crony way to run capital markets\u201d where they could have explained how the practice reflects underlying incentives and uncertainties<\/a>. Regarding the Troika\u2019s bailout of Greece in 2010, the authors contrast funds that repay creditors with those going to the \u201creal economy,\u201d as though a nation defaulting on its obligations would have a benign effect on its economy, \u201creal\u201d or otherwise.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Banks enable the safety and liquidity of personal savings, capital crosses oceans to fund entrepreneurs attacking entrenched incumbents, and joint-stock companies enable voluntary collective action and wealth creation on a scale unimaginable to our ancestors. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Any book of such breadth will omit and simplify more than it can include and explain. However, many of the authors\u2019 choices reflect political leanings. A map of FICO scores<\/a> by US county highlights concentrations of subprime borrowers<\/a> among Native American tribes, but a paean for money transfer services in Kenya make no such distinction between, say, Kikuyu and Maasai<\/a>. When considering how credit rating agencies from developed countries appraise sovereign bonds in the Global South, they note that \u201cbeing judged from afar is a disadvantage.\u201d\u00a0 An accurate statement, but one that gives no hint as to why those firms might prefer to locate in Dubai or Singapore instead of Maputo or Caracas. A discussion of inequality similarly omits the bigger picture. The authors lament that \u201cglobal wealth has grown at a highly unequal rate since 1995,\u201d but they do not mention that extreme poverty plummeted<\/a> at the same time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead the authors make their stance clear on the book\u2019s very first page, musing that \u201cIndigenous Australians used a bartering network that spanned a whole continent, prospering without money and finance for 50,000 years or so until the plunderous West showed up\u2026\u201d\u00a0 No doubt many people in pre-modern societies enjoyed lives suffuse with kindness and fulfilment. But everyone reading Atlas of Finance<\/em> will do so in a world undergirded by the institutions and practices collectively labelled \u201cfinance.\u201d Banks enable the safety and liquidity of personal savings, capital crosses oceans<\/a> to fund entrepreneurs attacking entrenched incumbents, and joint-stock companies enable voluntary collective action and wealth creation<\/a> on a scale unimaginable to our ancestors. All of which makes it strange to read a book that approaches this subject with such ambivalence.<\/p>\n None of the forgoing implies that W\u00f3jcik and his team failed to produce a valuable primer. All writing, including this review, reflects the limited purview and concerns of the author. But if Atlas of Finance <\/em>succeeds on its own terms by introducing the subject to financial novices, many of them will finish this book ready and eager to learn more.\u00a0<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> This review gives the views of the author, not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.<\/em> <\/p>\n Main image:<\/strong><\/em> Kollawat Somsri<\/a> on Shutterstock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Enjoyed this post?\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Subscribe to our newsletter<\/em><\/a>\u00a0for a round-up of the latest reviews sent straight to your inbox every other Tuesday.\ufeff<\/em><\/p>\n
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<\/a>As the world\u2019s supply of data continues to increase exponentially, demand for its visualisation likewise grows apace. Sites like Visual Capitalist<\/a>, Our World in Data<\/a>, and The Atlas of Economic Complexity<\/a> all compete by offering novel interpretations of business and economic statistics. To that end, the European Research Council funded a team of researchers<\/a> led by the economic geographer Dariusz W\u00f3jcik<\/a> to research \u201cCities in Global Financial Networks.\u201d This group has produced a torrent of peer-reviewed publications<\/a>, along with a new work accessible to the general reader, <\/em>Atlas of Finance<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
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