Financialization of agricultural commodities: Evidence from China

Speculation in the commodity futures market distorts commodity prices, driving them away from rational levels. This phenomenon, which is known as the financialization of commodities, has raised significant concerns in recent years. Particularly, in the agricultural market, ‘financialized’ commodities have been blamed for high world food prices. In this paper, we examine the financialization of agricultural commodities in China. To do so, a time-varying copula is employed to investigate the dependence structure between commodities and stock markets. Four insightful results are obtained. First, positive correlations between agricultural commodities and stock markets demonstrate the financialization of agricultural commodities. Second, the identified correlations are time-varying and idiosyncratic with respect to products. Third, the agricultural commodity market is more closely correlated with the domestic stock market than with the overseas market. Fourth, a growing dependence between commodities and the stock markets is detected and the co-movement became stronger after the global financial crisis.     

影响非正规就业安全性的因素分析

非正规就业作为多种就业形式之一在促进中国经济增长、缓解日益严重的就业压力方面起着越来越重要的作用。但同时在当下劳动力市场中非正规就业的安全性却受到了严峻的挑战。影响非正规就业安全性的主要因素表现为非正规就业者贫乏的社会资本以及本身偏低的人力资本存量、强资本弱劳工的社会格局;歧视性的政策惯性;不完善的劳动力市场以及缺位的社会服务体系。     

Are Full Employment and Social Cohesion Possible Under Financialization?

Unemployment and unequal income distribution were singled out by J.M. Keynes, in the General Theory, as major faults of capitalist economies. This paper argues that there is a negative relationship between financialization and unemployment. In particular, we develop a simple Post Keyneian/Kaleckian model and explore distribution as well as institutional channels through which financialization might have negatively affected the employment performance of capitalist economies, undermining the social cohesion and egalitarian development. Furthermore, we argue that in the face of financialization full employment is likely to be attainable under the institutionalization of an Employer of Last Resort (hereafter ELR) policy strategy.     

Are Full Employment and Social Cohesion Possible Under Financialization?

Unemployment and unequal income distribution were singled out by J.M. Keynes, in the General Theory, as major faults of capitalist economies. This paper argues that there is a negative relationship between financialization and unemployment. In particular, we develop a simple Post Keyneian/Kaleckian model and explore distribution as well as institutional channels through which financialization might have negatively affected the employment performance of capitalist economies, undermining the social cohesion and egalitarian development. Furthermore, we argue that in the face of financialization full employment is likely to be attainable under the institutionalization of an Employer of Last Resort (hereafter ELR) policy strategy.     

技术市场发展、实体企业金融化与创新质量

以2005—2020年中国A股上市企业为样本，实证研究实体企业金融化对创新质量的影响效应和机制，重点关注技术市场发展对上述影响效应和机制的调节作用。结果表明，实体企业金融化对创新质量具有负向影响效应，技术市场发展能够强化这一影响效应，在技术市场发展较快的地区，实体企业金融化对创新质量的负向影响效应更加显著，融资约束和全要素生产率是实体企业金融化影响企业创新质量的有效机制；技术市场发展的调节效应主要作用于影响机制的前半路径，在技术市场发展较快的地区，实体企业金融化对融资约束的缓解效应较弱，对全要素生产率的负向影响效应更强；实体企业金融化对创新质量的影响效应在产品市场竞争、是否为家族企业和银企关系方面存在异质性，当产品市场竞争更激烈、银企关系较差和企业为非家族企业时，实体企业金融化对创新质量的负向影响更显著。     

The consequences of labor market flexibility: Panel evidence based on survey data

We introduce a new data set on hiring and firing restrictions for 21 OECD countries for the period 1984-1990. The data are based on surveys of business people in the countries covered, so the indices we use are subjective in nature. Controlling for country and time fixed effects, and using dynamic panel data techniques, we find evidence that increasing the flexibility of the labor market increases both the employment rate and the rate of participation in the labor force. A conservative estimate suggests that if France were to make its labor markets as flexible as those in the US, its employment rate would increase 1.6 percentage points, or 14% of the employment gap between the two countries. The estimated effects are larger in the female than in the male labor market, although both groups seem to have similar long-run coefficients. There is also some evidence that more flexibility leads to lower unemployment rates and to lower rates of long-term unemployment. We also find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that inflexible labor markets produce “jobless recoveries” and introduce more unemployment persistence.     

Failure to Expand? Socio-Technical Practices and Moral Judgement in Markets for Biodiversity Offsets

Markets have become an important form of governance in the neoliberal era. The ideology of markets as the most efficient form of organising economic activity has led to the expansion of their usage, both in terms of what is governed by the market, but also in terms of the spaces in which the practices of a given market apply. However, there have been important challenges to market expansion, particularly on political and ethical grounds. This paper analyses how the socio-technical practices of market expansion can be affected by political contestation and individual moral judgements. This is analysed in the context of two markets for biodiversity offsets, in the United States and England. In both cases, regulators attempted to devise and standardise calculative mechanisms and socio-technical practices that promoted the use and expansion of the market. However, these socio-technical market practices have struggled to cross and negotiate uneven political and social spaces, being subject to moral judgements and political contestation. The paper demonstrates how the socio-technical practices of market expansion are affected by social entanglements, highlighting how this creates limits to the expansion of the market as a form of governance.     

Knowledge at work: Some neoliberal anachronisms

With a predilection for market solutions, neoliberalism upholds that the individual is generally the best judge of his or her interests. Yet markets are never universally applied as a mechanism of allocation and there are reasons, in principle, why capitalism will always have “missing markets.” Concentrating on the application and appropriateness of neoliberal theory to the workplace, this article argues that firms are not markets, despite some tendencies in modern theory to conflate the two. The employment contract is a key characteristic of modern firms, but neoliberal theory is often silent on the distinction between an employment contract and a contract for services, and largely ignores the asymmetrical rights of authority within contracts of employment. Furthermore, the social nature of knowledge represents a challenge to neoliberal theory and policy, because it sometimes makes it more difficult to define individual property rights. Accordingly, with the growth of the knowledge economy, neoliberalism to some extent is an anachronism.     

Financialization of the Economy and Income Inequality in China

The income gap between the financial sector and other sectors has been widening since the mid-1990s. Why do financiers in China earn more than others? We analyze this issue against the background of financialization of the economy. The year 1993 was a watershed year, in which China began the process of rapid financialization. Since 1993, the financial sector has become increasingly powerful, overshadowing other sectors. Evidence shows that the high income levels that exist in the financial sector are related to this process of financialization in China. Financialization influences income distribution in China through two channels: money issuance and liquidation of social capital. The labor market equilibrium of the financial sector and wage level determination are not naturally formed but constructed. The increasing income inequality between the financial sector and other sectors is a consequence of financialization of the economy in China.     

正视农村剩余劳动力转移的挑战

中国在10年左右的周期内农村剩余劳动力转出的总规模需要达到1．5亿到两亿人。城乡劳动力对就业岗位的竞争正在趋于激化。大中型城市将是新增就业岗位的主要来源。就业岗位正在成为国际竞争中最稀缺的资源。就业优先应当成为最重要的战略取向。劳动力市场发育要优先于其他要素的市场发育,就业岗位增加要优先于社会收入水平提高。就业政策的重点是要防止供求不平衡导致交易价格被压低到供给成本之下,同时保证有限的就业机会优先分配给最优秀、最有效率的群体。     

风险投资驱动企业“脱虚向实”了吗

近年来，企业金融化现象在学术界备受关注。国内外研究表明，风险投资对企业投资和企业创新均具有积极影响，那么风险投资能否影响企业金融投资行为？以2009—2019年沪深两市首次公开发行的A股上市公司为研究样本，实证分析风险投资对企业金融化的影响。结果表明：风险投资对企业金融化具有显著抑制作用，且这种抑制作用存在异质性。具体而言，风险投资对企业金融化的抑制效应主要体现在制造企业、盈利能力较弱企业、非国有企业以及东部区域企业中。同时，机构投资者持股比例越高，风险投资对企业金融化的抑制作用越强。机制分析结果表明，风险投资通过促进企业实体投资抑制企业金融化。进一步分析发现，风险投资能够缓解被投企业融资约束，而融资约束的改善并未促进企业金融化，而是促进企业创新。结论可丰富风险投资与企业金融化相关领域研究，证明风险投资能够驱动实体企业“脱虚向实”，对政府发展多层次资本市场，引导金融回归实体具有一定的参考价值。     

How index investment impacts commodities: A story about the financialization of agricultural commodities

This paper focuses on the impact of financial investors on agricultural prices, a phenomenon known as the financialization. In this aim, we check whether financial mechanisms drive extreme values and the mean of agricultural returns in the same way. Relying on the Threshold AutoRegressive Quantile (TQAR) methodology, we find evidence of reinforcement linkages between equity and agricultural markets since 2004, corresponding to the rise in inflows of institutional investors in commodity markets. These results show that agents impact more deeply commodity markets when the commodity index value is high. In addition, in extreme quantiles (0.75 and 0.90) of agricultural returns, the relationship between agricultural and stock returns is always significant when the commodity index return is in the higher regime. This finding suggests that, stock markets had a greater impact on agricultural price dynamics during the extreme movements which occurred during the 2007–2008 financial crisis, highlighting a potential influence of financial markets on the financialization of commodities.     

Financialization and the rise in co-movement of commodity prices

Between January 2000 and June 2008, the FAO food price index rose by 96%. Besides the magnitude, the price rise was remarkable for the broad range of commodities affected; prices of agriculture commodities, energy, and metals all rose and fell together. These dramatic developments coincided with a massive inflow of investment in the commodities futures market, and the rise of commodities as an investment class. In this paper, I study causal links between the increase in the co-movement between commodity prices and financialization of the commodities futures market. I extract common factors from a group of 40 commodities using the PANIC method and include it in a factor-augment VEC model along with a proxy of financialization. Results show that financialization of the commodities futures markets can explain the recent rise in co-movement between commodity prices, after accounting for macroeconomic variables.     

Search, migration, and urban land use: The case of transportation policies

We develop a search-matching model with rural-urban migration and an explicit land market. Wages, job creation, urban housing prices are endogenous and we characterize the steady-state equilibrium. We then consider three different policies: a transportation policy that improves the public transport system in the city, an entry-cost policy that encourages investment in the city and a restricting-migration policy that imposes some costs on migrants. We show that all these policies can increase urban employment but the transportation policy has much more drastic effects. This is because a decrease in commuting costs has both a direct positive effect on land rents, which discourages migrants to move to the city, and a direct negative effect on urban wages, which reduces job creation and thus migration. When these two effects are combined with search frictions, the interactions between the land and the labor markets have amplifying positive effects on urban employment. Thus, improving the transport infrastructure in cities can increase urban employment despite the induced migration from rural areas.     

Have food and financial markets integrated?

This article analyses comovements and discusses possibly greater market integration between aggregate food commodity and stock prices in the period 1990 to 2012. Return correlations, price return distributions, cointegration and Granger-causalities are tested in subsamples on monthly FAO Food Price Index and MSCI World Stock Market Index. Empirical results suggest that while there is only weak indication of greater comovements concurrent with structural changes such as changed agricultural policies, new demand due to growth in emerging markets and energy mandates and the financialization of food markets since the early 2000s, they did start to increase substantially in particular during the financial stress of the Lehman crisis and the Great Recession. While structural changes may have amplified price linkages across markets, results do not suggest that they are the key factors for greater price comovements. Instead, the effects of the late-2000s recession as a time of great economic weakness and uncertainty may have changed concurrently the behaviour of both food and financial market participants, such that different market prices exhibit large comovements.     

Wages and Employment in China''s SOEs, 1980–1994: Corporatization, Market Development, and Insider Forces

Using firm-level panel data, we evaluate the importance of reform measures, market development, and insider forces in wage and employment determination in China's state sector. Initial output per worker is positively correlated with change in employment, and market wages are significantly associated with firm employment and wages in the later period. Both indicate development of the labor markets. Corporatization lowered wages by 11 to 15% and improved productivity by 6%. Finally, we find evidence that labor markets for managers and engineers have been developed more than those for production workers and that wage premiums for college graduates have increased dramatically since the late 1980's. J. Comp. Econom., December 1999, 27(4), pp. 702–729. IRIS, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742.     

Kinetics of jobs in multi-link cities with migration-driven aggregation process

Immigration has long been a hotly debated issue. The core of this debate is immigrants' impact on local job markets. Some people insist that instead of creating more jobs, immigrants actually take away more jobs thus decrease the living standard of natives. Others argue that the presence of immigrants benefits the society as a whole since they enlarge the labor force and lower the production cost. In this paper, we propose a model describing the migration-driven aggregation behaviors in job markets with foreign immigration, and introduce the method of network and aggregation to look at this issue from a new perspective. We divide the job market in each city into two groups: native and immigrant. And we view each city as a node with l links; each link represents a way of transportation to other cities. Then it is not hard to see that cities with more links tend to be more job concentrated with larger flows of jobs. We assume that both native and immigrant job markets have a migration of jobs within themselves and the native ones have birth rate and death rate of jobs as well. Through analyzing different rates: K₁ and K₂, initial conditions, and the combined effect of birth rate and death rate, we are able to predict the changes of some variables in the long run. These changes indicate the impact of immigrants on native job markets. Thus provide some helpful information to this issue.     

Flexibility and Growth

After two decades of theoretical discussion and application of labour policies aimed at flexibility, ever-spreading unemployment in Europe has compelled some official institutions to admit that the 'rigidity' of the labour market does not suffice to account for the different trends in employment displayed by Europe and the United States. In this paper, we focus on the role played by differentials in income growth. After briefly reviewing the explanations of European unemployment based on labour market rigidity and their respective weaknesses, we look at the relationship between growth and employment, concluding that there are grounds for maintaining that the causes of Europe's higher unemployment reside mainly in its lower rate of growth.We therefore investigate the reasons that may be responsible for a more stringent macroeconomic constraint on European growth.We conclude that if a lack of growth is at the root of European unemployment, then merely dismantling labour market institutions, and replacing them with a more flexible system of industrial relations, will not only fail to produce the expected results but may also have negative effects, in both the social and productive structure.     

Technical change and market structure

This paper investigates the ceteris-paribus effects of labor reducing technical progress on industry-wide employment under different market regimes. We distinguish between a contestable market, a monopoly, and a market with bounded supplier power. Under a constant wage rate, employment will not decrease only if the elasticity of demand on a contestable market exceeds one. The same thing holds for markets with bounded supplier power. Under a monopoly, price elasticity must even be more than three. Ceteris paribus we thus have to expect a higher probability of employment reduction under a monopoly than under other market regimes. Raising wages proportional to productivity leads to an employment reduction on stagnating markets with supplier power. Here a raise in wages without layoffs is only possible if the growth in demand is at least as high as the growth in productivity.The author is indebted to Alfred E. Ott, Sabine Böckem, Rolf Wiegert and Ulf Schiller for valuable comments. Of course, I take responsibility for all remaining errors.     

What are the determinants of hiring? The importance of product market demand and search frictions

In this article, we study the importance of product market demand and search frictions for hiring. We use a search-matching model with imperfect competition in the product market to derive an equation for total hiring in a local labour market, and estimate it on Swedish panel data. If product markets are imperfectly competitive, product demand shocks should have a direct effect on employment for given levels of prices and wages. Our main finding is that product demand has such a direct effect on hiring. This highlights the importance of taking imperfect competition in the product market into account in studies of employment dynamics and hiring. We also find that, for given levels of prices, wages, and product demand, the number of unemployed workers in a local labour market has a positive effect on hiring, suggesting that search frictions matter. Quantitatively, product demand shocks seem to be more important for understanding the variation in hiring than shocks to the number of unemployed workers.