From Receding to Reseeding: Industrial Policy,Governance Strategies and Neoliberal Resilience in Post-crisis Britain

ABSTRACT

Industrial policy has been on the agenda of British policy elites since the 2008 financial crisis, particularly since Theresa May became Prime Minister in 2016. This has been seen as a challenge to pre-crisis norms of economic governance associated with neoliberalism. This article explores key aspects of industrial policy development in post-crisis Britain – new forms of vertical support for industry, local government reform, and the public financing of private sector R&D – in order to sketch a new understanding of political and ideological change. It focuses on the institutional mechanisms through which industrial strategy will ostensibly be implemented, including subnational and private spheres of governance. The article argues that recent industrial policy developments do not represent the receding of neoliberalism, but rather have provided opportunities for the reseeding of neoliberal norms in British economic statecraft. The strategy has reinforced forms of state machinery through which pre-crisis elite practice can be maintained and legitimated. By demonstrating that the apparent revival of state intervention in the wake of capitalist crises must not be assumed automatically to challenge pre-crisis economic orders, and highlighting the crucial role of exigent political circumstances, the article makes an important contribution to the literature on neoliberal resilience.     

科技金融政策能否降低环境污染？——基于“促进科技与金融结合试点”的准自然实验

在创新驱动城市发展的背景下,科技金融发展为生态环境治理提供了新动力和新方向。本文基于中国2003—2018年262个地级市数据,将“促进科技与金融结合试点”实施视为一次准自然实验,运用双重差分法考察了科技金融政策的环境治理效应及其影响机制。研究发现：首先,科技金融政策的实施对环境污染具有明显的抑制作用,并且与水污染相比,科技金融政策对于空气污染的治理效果更为明显;其次,从城市区位来看,科技金融政策对于东部和北部地区的环境治理效果要优于中部、西部和南部地区;从城市等级来看,科技金融政策对于高等级城市具有更为明显的治污排污效果;最后,中介效应分析表明,金融发展、技术创新和经济规模是科技金融政策改善环境的有效路径。此外,科技金融政策实施对于邻近地区的环境治理具有显著的空间溢出效果。上述分析首次尝试将环境污染纳入到科技金融政策的评估框架中,丰富和完善了环境治理的相关研究,有效地回应了学术界关于科技创新、金融发展和环境治理的争论,为推动经济高质量发展提供了经验证据。     

产业升级视角下绿色信贷与环保财政政策协同效应研究

单一的绿色信贷政策或环保财政政策在促进环境治理、产业升级等方面存在局限性。因此，首先在阐述绿色信贷政策和财政政策作用机理的基础上，给出二者可能的政策协同渠道。然后，利用2007—2016年省际面板数据，考察绿色信贷与环保财政政策在促进产业升级方面是否存在协同效应，并对有可能增强二者协同效果的相关因素进行检验。结果表明：绿色信贷与环保财政政策存在显著协同效应，并且绿色信贷与税收政策的协同效果优于其与支出政策的协同效果，而金融发展水平能够显著促进绿色信贷与环保财政政策协同。此外，考察了政策协同与单位能耗及单位污染排放的关联性，得出了相似的结论。     

Transnational Depoliticisation and Industrial Policy: The European Commission and French Steel (1980–1984)

ABSTRACT

Following the 2008 financial crash, voices have called governments to re-embrace industrial policy and promote industrial development. Such calls presuppose that the past decades witnessed a relative retreat of activist industrial policies. Within international political economy the latter is explained by the limits posed by the structure of global economic governance and globalisation on the state’s interventionist capacities. This article argues that these constraints have enabled states to pursue the transnational depoliticisation of industrial policy and transfer decision-making responsibilities to spheres lying beyond the governmental arena such as transnational institutions. By appealing to supranational economic rules, governments can disclose their own preferences for certain industrial policies and resist pressures to assist declining activities. To substantiate these claims the article proposes an archival investigation of the French government’s management of the steel industry between 1980 and 1984 and its support for a European Commission-led management of restructuring. The findings suggest that the pressures of the Commission played a crucial role in strengthening the government’s effort to implement socially unpopular but economically vital industrial choices.     

基于欧债危机的欧盟多层次区域治理

本文基于大量翔实的统计数据,首先分析部分欧元区成员国陷入主权债务危机的原因与表现,然后深入研究重债国、欧元区和欧盟的综合治理措施。结果发现,产业结构不合理、贸易逆差较大、政府收支失衡、统一货币政策与分散财政政策并存等内因是导致危机的关键,全球金融危机是重要加速器。针对欧债危机的欧盟多层次区域治理,集短期应急措施、中期整改措施与长期预警机制的建立为一体,是超国家机构与主权国家之间协调一致的共同治理,对于全球治理具有重要示范效应。     

Sovereign Debt Management and the Transformation from Keynesian to Neoliberal Monetary Governance in Britain

ABSTRACT

Private financial markets are central to the implementation of monetary governance. This necessary integration of public and private finance means the way states govern must evolve with developments in financial markets. This article examines how the rise of liability management underpinned a shift to market-based banking and transformed the operation of monetary policy in Britain. It assesses the period of reform between 1967 and 1981 and what this meant for monetary governance. Political economy literature depicts this period as a shift to depoliticised, deregulated governance with public authority giving way to market power. This paper challenges this perspective on the grounds that it misconstrues the problem policymakers faced. The shift from Keynesian to neoliberal monetary governance came in response to the change in banking practice with the rise of liability management and a parallel money market. This underpinned an explosion of credit creation that the old system of monetary policy, organised around the Base Rate and ‘primary’ discount market could not fix. As a result, the monetary authorities had to render this new financial environment governable. The period should therefore be reassessed in terms of the capacities the state attempted to construct to conduct monetary governance.     

区域协同治理政策的大气污染减排效应研究——基于双重差分法的实证检验

区域协同治理政策是中国提升大气污染治理效果的关键。首先对政策执行可能产生的治理效果展开分析,提出假设1~4;进一步以地级及以上城市的工业SO2为典型污染物,构建双重差分模型（DID）评估区域协同治理政策的减排效果,以及技术创新、产业结构和对外开放三种中介路径下的间接影响。结果显示：(1).以京津冀和长三角地区城市为实验组,其它城市作为对照组,区域协同治理政策的影响系数为-1.3427,政策显著降低污染排放水平,结果具有良好的稳健性。(2).分样本检验显示,京津冀地区政策效果明显优于长三角地区,经济发达地区的政策效果高于欠发达地区,政策执行中的区域异质性不容忽视。(3). 三条中介路径中,区域协同治理政策通过技术创新和对外开放的污染减排效果显著,而通过影响产业结构产生的间接驱动效果微弱。继续推动区域协同治理政策落实中,充分考虑区域差异化特征基础上,重视中介路径的识别和可能带来的减排潜力应成为重要的政策优化方向。     

过程、结果维度的环境治理与企业财务绩效

目前国内外对于环境治理与企业财务绩效之间关系的研究,结论不一致且不能有效比较,可能是由于没有区分环境治理的不同维度,而高成本的环境治理过程与环境治理结果之间的关系尚不明确。本文基于2009—2017年A股公司年报手工搜集企业环境治理数据,基于权衡理论、自然资源理论和TLGT效应等,检验了环境治理过程和结果与企业财务绩效之间的非线性关系。结果发现:环境治理过程正向影响环境治理结果,而环境治理过程和结果两个维度都与企业财务绩效呈U型关系,较差的环境治理过程和结果均负向影响财务绩效,而较好的环境治理过程和结果均正向影响财务绩效,并且环境治理结果在环境治理过程和企业财务绩效之间发挥非线性中介作用。进一步检验发现,过程维度的环境治理仅通过成本效应路径影响财务绩效,而结果维度的环境治理同时通过成本效应路径和差异化效应路径影响财务绩效。本文基于中国的制度背景将环境治理划分为治理过程和治理结果两个维度,为企业环境治理与财务绩效之间的关系提供了经验证据,并对促进中国企业环境治理提供了一定启示。     

Professionals inside the board room: accounting expertise of directors and dividend policy

Directors’ personal attributes have significant impacts on governance effectiveness. We study whether directors’ accounting expertise affects corporate financial policy and investigate dividend in specific. We construct a dataset of audit committee directors’ accounting expertise for Standard & Poor 500 firms from 2005 to 2012. We first verify directors’ monitoring roles by showing that firms with accounting expert sitting on their audit committees demonstrate stronger accounting conservatism. In our main tests, we find that these firms maintain lower dividend payment level, which are less sensitive to earnings volatility. This suggests directors’ advisory roles in financial policy. We further show that our accounting expertise cannot be subsumed by management ability. In additional test, we further examine the baseline results conditional on analyst forecast error. Our findings highlight the importance of directors’ professional expertise in fulfilling their governance roles.     

Subprime crisis and board (in-) competence: private versus public banks in Germany

We examine evidence for a systematic underperformance of Germany's state-owned banks in the current financial crisis and study if the bank losses can be traced to the quality of bank governance. For this purpose, we examine the biographical background of 592 supervisory board members in the 29 largest banks and find a pronounced difference in the finance and management experience of board representatives across private and state-owned banks. Measures of 'boardroom competence' are then related directly to the magnitude of bank losses in the recent financial crisis. Our data confirm that supervisory board (in-)competence in finance is related to losses in the financial crisis. Improved bank governance is therefore a suitable policy objective to reduce bank fragility.
— Harald Hau and Marcel Thum     

地方政府性债务治理与上市企业投融资*——基于我国247座城市的初步证据

本文利用中国社科院披露的我国247座城市地方政府性债务对金融稳定影响的评价指数,分析了地方政府性债务治理对上市企业债务融资与资本性投资效率的影响及其传导机理。研究发现,与地方政府性债务治理较好地区相比,处于地方政府性债务治理较差地区的地方政府控股国企,其杠杆率均显著较高,但企业资本性投资效率却显著较低,企业产能过剩的财务特征十分明显。这表明,地方政府性债务治理会显著影响微观企业的投融资,并且地方政府性债务治理越差,透过政府对经济活动的控制或干预,通过预算外举债,政府“杠杆”有转化为企业“杠杆”的风险。本文明确了“去杠杆”究竟应去谁的“杠杆”问题,对理解地方政府性债务治理转变为“内涵型”经济增长的微观基础具有重要的理论和现实意义。     

From Industrial Policy to Innovation Policy: Japan's Pursuit of Competitive Advantage*

Japan faces significant challenges in encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. Attempts to formally model past industrial policy interventions uniformly uncover little, if any, positive impact on productivity, growth, or welfare. The evidence indicates that most resource flows went to large, politically influential “backwards” sectors, suggesting that political economy considerations may be central to the apparent ineffectiveness of Japanese industrial policy. Rather than traditional industrial or science and technology policy, financial and labor market reforms appear more promising. As a group, Japan's industrial firms are competitive relative to their foreign counterparts. Where Japan falls behind is in the heavily regulated service sector. The problems appear to be due less to a lack of industrial policy than to an excess of regulation. Japan may have more to gain through restructuring the lagging service sector than by expending resources in pursuit of marginal gains in the industrial sector.     

演化经济学视角下政府治理创新与区域智造产业协同发展研究

地方政府治理体系创新给区域智造产业带来了全新的机遇与挑战。基于演化经济学理论，以珠海、深圳临港经济区先进制造产业集群为研究对象，利用173家规模以上智能制造企业2015-2017年政府治理创新前后的工业经济指标数据，运用SIENA模型，从动态演化视角对大数据监管下的政府治理创新与区域智造产业协同发展路径进行实证研究。结果表明：运用大数据监管创新政府治理对区域智造产业发展的促进效果显著，且在发展周期上表现为治理创新、工业经济发展与地方社会贡献的协同演化稳定性。据此，给出有利于政府现代治理创新与区域智造产业协同发展的政策启示。     

首都经济圈金融发展与产业结构调整——来自1978年至2012年省际数据的实证研究

选取1978-2012年的有关数据,采用ADF平稳性检验和Granger因果检验的计量方法,研究金融发展对首都经济圈产业结构调整的作用效果。结果发现：供给领先型的金融发展模式主导和影响首都经济圈的产业结构调整。但是,金融对首都经济圈产业结构调整的推动效应尚未完全释放,金融领域的体制性、机制性障碍成为影响和制约产业结构进一步优化升级的主要因素。因此,金融支持首都经济圈产业升级的政策着力点是,推动区域金融协调合作、提升金融市场的容量与层次、发展政府主导的产业投资基金、加快区域金融创新步伐、优化区域金融生态环境等。     

Competition policy: ten lessons learnt from the financial crisis

The financial crisis brought great challenges also for competition policy. The aim of this paper is to summarize the most important insights for competition policy that could be derived from the turbulent period 2008–2010. The financial crisis is seen as project that demanded sound management from competition policy and enforcement. The insights will be presented in the instructive form of ‘lessons learnt’ which represents a common approved project management technique. We come to the result that the financial crisis is not the result of ‘too much competition’, but of regulatory failure and that the main answers to the financial crisis have to come from ‘smart regulation’. The relaxation of competition policy would be the wrong policy response in troubled times since competition policy can play an important role in bringing the crisis economy back on track. In contrast to banking we see no economic rationale for rescue packages for other economic sectors by referring to systemic risk. The renaissance of industrial policy is viewed with great skepticism since empirical evidence shows that the effort of picking ‘winners’ all too often results in saving ‘losers’.     

The eurozone financial crisis: debt,credit ratings and monetary and fiscal policy

This paper discusses the eurozone financial crisis. It argues that it was largely the result of a common monetary policy not being suitable for individual countries which led to excessive private and public borrowing and a debt crisis. Neither borrowing rates nor credit ratings anticipated the crisis. Fundamental changes to eurozone governance are being proposed. The paper examines whether instead there might be a market solution if financial markets priced risk better. Accordingly, a more timely way of obtaining credit ratings is shown.