Documents capital resources 40 results

"Using the rise of the Chinese ‘shareholding state' as an example, this article attempts to extend the study of financialization from the economy to the state. It documents a historical and institutional process in which the Chinese state refashioned itself as a shareholder and institutional investor in the economy and resorted to financial means to manage its ownership, assets and public investments. I demonstrate that financialization of economic management in the Chinese state contain three processes: the introduction of shareholder values by the state to managing its asset, the expansion of state asset management bodies and the provision of structured investment vehicles by these institutions to fund fixed asset investment. By uncovering the mutually leveraging effect between sovereign power and finance, this study illustrates a politically endogenous model for the rise of finance in state-directed economies."

"In recent decades, financialization has significantly restructured American capitalism. Social scientists have offered several accounts to explain financial markets' ascendance, but this work often portrays financialization as a totalizing force and is conducted within divergent theoretical paradigms—political economy and neo-institutionalism—with few attempts to bridge these differences. Accordingly, we risk talking past each other while failing to identify where financialization occurs. I address these issues with a unique panel data set, panel analysis and with a focus on identifying the meso-level determinants of financialization. I do so with a substantively important industry that exemplifies the global, flexible and competitive characteristics of neoliberal capitalism. I argue that the propensity to financialize rests significantly upon firms' productive roles, meaning we cannot understand financialization without understanding production—global production networks in particular. This is also a call for researchers to explore financialization's multifaceted character and to develop a more analytically rigorous research agenda."

"Based on the literature on the diversity of capitalism (DoC) and legal origin (LO), this article examines the role of institutional configurations in the uneven development of private equity (PE) in 18 European countries. The article shows that developed stock markets, the ability of limited partners (insurance companies) to invest in LBO funds and low employment protection are more important determinants than investor protection in the case of LBO investments. However, venture capital (VC) investments are found to be positively associated with investor protection but also with developed stock markets and favourable tax rates for managers. R&D tax incentives for investee companies are found to have a negative impact on VC investments, which are nonetheless promoted by public R&D expenditures. Even if national institutional configurations matter in explaining differences, as emphasised by LO and DoC, we observe a common trend in PE development and financialisation."

"This paper studies the specific effect that firing costs can have on firms facing liquidity constraints. When firing costs are zero and a time gap exists between production and its associated revenues, firing allows firms to hold on to their liquid assets by saving on wages, and thus, allows firms to cope better with liquidity shocks when external financing is too costly or unavailable. I refer to this feature as labor's liquidity service. Higher firing costs reduces the value of labor's liquidity service, and thus, increases firms' incentive for hoarding liquidity and reduces firms' demand for production inputs. In addition to this negative effect at the creation margin of production, firing costs have a relatively higher positive effect on the destruction margin of production of financially restricted firms. This paper presents a model that develops these ideas and shows that the presence of firing costs has a stronger negative effect on the output of firms facing liquidity constraints. Regression analysis, based on country–industry panel data sets, provides empirical evidence consistent with the liquidity service effect of firing costs. I find a relatively stronger negative effect of firing costs on the output of industries with higher liquidity requirements and a relatively stronger negative effect of firing costs on the output of small, and more likely financially constrained, firms."

"Recent changes in laws, regulations and even the reporting format of labor organization annual financial reports in both the US and Australia have received surprisingly little attention, yet they have significantly increased the amount of information available both to union members and the public in general, as reports in both countries are available via government web sites. While such financial reporting laws are exteremely rare in European countries, with the exception of the UK and Ireland, the US and Australian reporting systems have become among the most detailed in the world. After reviewing these changes in financial reporting and the availability of these reports, as well as comparing and contrasting the specific reporting requirements of each country, this paper then examines the cost-benefit impact of more detailed financial reporting."

"Economic inequality is high on the political agenda, being held responsible for the rise of protest movements and for rejection of the political status quo. Yet we lack concrete proposals for reducing inequality. There is widespread gloom that little can be done. In this article, I put forward a set of measures for tackling inequality. If we want to reduce inequality, then there are steps that can be taken. They are not necessarily easy and they have costs. We would have to discard economic and political orthodoxies. If our leaders are serious about tackling inequality, then they have to move outside their comfort zone and to consider a wider agenda. The proposals need to be tailored to the context of each country, but are based on an analysis of the common causes of higher inequality, including the role of technology and robotisation, how the labour market is changing so that we can no longer focus on "jobs", and the shifting relation between the ownership of wealth and the control of capital."