International Macro-Finance and Uneven Development

This research project is led by the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL IIPP).
Explore all IIPP research projects here. 

Dates of the project: 2018-Present

The Challenge 

Developing and emerging economies (DEEs) remain structurally subordinated within global financial markets and the international monetary system. This entrenched positioning constrains the agency of domestic economic actors, fuels tensions between growth and income distribution, and exposes these economies to recurrent crises and systemic vulnerabilities. Mainstream economics often attributes these dynamics to domestic policy failures, and its relatively new subfield, international macro-finance, look at financial markets and their role in international risk sharing through general equilibrium asset-pricing models, focusing narrowly on portfolio choices and asset prices across multiple goods. In contrast, critical traditions such as Dependency Theory, Post-Keynesian economics, and Marxist scholarship understand this dynamics as rooted in the deep asymmetries of global capitalism. They offer a more systemic and historically grounded analysis, through lenses dollar hegemony, the role of international lenders of last resort, currency hierarchies, and financialisation, among others. 

Our Approach 

Since its inception in 2018, the project has redirected analytical attention from developed economies — where financialisation research has traditionally been concentrated — toward both the distinct and underexplored manifestations of financialisation in DEEs, and the rich body of literature emerging from these contexts themselves. At the time, research on DEEs was largely empirical and lacked a systematic theoretical foundation, often relying on frameworks developed for advanced economies and overlooking the historical, institutional, and structural specificities of DEEs. 

By 2022, the project explicitly adopted the term Global South, not merely as a geographic designation but as a critical conceptual tool to demarcate the capitalist core from a constellation of countries historically subjected to colonial domination, systemic socioeconomic marginalisation, and structural exclusion from global governance and representation. 

Within this background, and collaborating with Ilias Alami, Bruno Bonizzi, Annina Kaltenbrunner, Kai Koddenbrock, Ingrid Kvangraven, and Jeff Powell, we introduced the concept of International Financial Subordination (IFS) to capture the persistent structural positioning of DEEs within the global financial system, an asymmetry rooted in the uneven architecture of global monetary, financial, and productive systems. 

• 2018 Workshop (Cambridge Political Economy Society): In collaboration with Bruno Bonizzi and Annina Kaltenbrunner, Carolina Alves organises a workshop How to Conceptualise Financialisation in Developing and Emerging Economies? Manifestations, Drivers and Implications at Girton College, University of Cambridge. The event foregrounds the specificities of DEEs across themes such as global economy, production, state, and micro-financialisation.
• 2019 Special Issue (Cambridge Journal of Economics): Insights from the workshop consolidate into two volumes dedicated to conceptualising financialisation in DEEs, attracting over 100 submissions worldwide.
• 2019–2022 ISRF Funding: With support from the Independent Social Research Foundation, the collective deepens collaboration, organises a workshop at University of Leeds, and publishes a landmark paper introducing International Financial Subordination as a relational framework of domination and uneven development (Review of International Political Economy, 2022). To disseminate this research, the group organises, among other things, a Mini Conference in 2022 titled “The Political Economy of Financial Subordination” at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), and a panel titled “International Financial Subordination” at the 2024 Annual Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE).
• 2025–2027 Development and Change Forum and Workshop: The team convenes again to fosters critical dialogue on how climate breakdown, geopolitical shifts, and transformations in finance, production, and technology are reshaping the global economic order, especially for the Global South. Titled Shifting Financial Hierarchies Amidst Ecological Breakdown and Geopolitical Contestation, the Forum is preceded by a 2026 workshop at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. 

At UCL IIPP, Carolina Alves leads the project. Her research trajectory — from her BA dissertation on “Financial Capital: A Historical Approach” through her PhD on Brazilian public debt — shapes her focus on state-led financialisation and the tensions between fiscal and monetary policy under financial globalisation. 

Carolina also welcomes PhD students, Post-docs, Early Career Academics, and Visiting Professorships in this area. 

• Funding opportunities include: UCL Research Excellence Scholarship, UBEL DTP’s fully funded ESRC studentships, Sandwich Doctorate Program (PDSE), Sandwich Doctorate Program (SWE), Full Doctorate Program Abroad, as well as The Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships, The Leverhulme Trust International Fellowships, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellowships, The Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorships 

Why it matters 

This project foregrounds International Financial Subordination as a foundational analytical lens for interrogating enduring global financial hierarchies and uneven development. It conceptualises a spatialised structure of domination, inferiority, and subjugation, expressed through monetary and financial systems, which systematically disadvantages and penalises actors in the Global South. By reframing financial analysis around this concept and tracing the mechanisms through which monetary architectures and financial flows condition agency and facilitate asymmetric value transfers, the project offers a robust framework for diagnosing and contesting structural financial inequalities. This intervention is especially urgent in the context of accelerating climate breakdown, shifting geopolitical configurations, and disruptive technological transformations, all of which amplify the stakes of financial subordination and demand a rethinking and reimaging of global economic governance. 

Resources 

Alami, I., Alves, C., Bonizzi, B., Kaltenbrunner, A., Koddenbrock, K., Kvangraven, I., & Powell, J. (2022). “International financial subordination: a critical research agenda”. Review of International Political Economy, 30(4), 1360–1386. 
Read the article

Video: Reunião Finde - Carolina Alves - International Financial Subordination (Meeting Closed - Carolina Alves - International Financial Subordination)
Description: Carolina Alves presents ”International Financial Subordination: A Critical Research Agenda” at the Research Group on Financialisation and Development (FINDE), Fluminense Federal University (UFF), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 
Language: Portuguese.

This research project is led by the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL IIPP).
Explore all IIPP research projects here.