This thesis examines contrasting conceptualisations of financial markets, their regulation and reproduction. It develops an empirical study of the response of Toronto's investment banking sector to the global competitive dynamics at play in restructuring traditional markets for the sector's services. Findings suggest that local financial practices and the character and role of individual financial centres continue to be actively shaped in quite critical ways by regionally based institutions and the nation state. It is argued that the global integration of financial markets is more partial, fragmented and contested than often characterised in the literature. A variety of local, national and international dynamics appear to be at play in shaping distinctive trajectories of development among different types of financial markets. The thesis illustrates the need to re-evaluate orthodox interpretations of markets and the character of market integration, and begins to outline a social model of the production of financial services.
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