Return of industrial policy?

For the sake of freedom, economic growth and poverty reduction the state in market economies should limit itself to regulating markets and (sometimes) correcting ‘market failures’. This neoliberal conception has been the near-consensus for the past two to three decades in the West and in western-led international organizations such as the World Bank. But as of recently, the consensus has been challenged by circumstances with which it cannot contend. This article spells out key ideas behind the consensus – in particular, its rejection of industrial policy. It then argues that the US government has long practised – to good effect – a hitherto little noticed type of industrial policy focused neither on the individual firm nor on the geographic region but on networks of firms, and that a (small) change in the American normative climate has occurred post 2008 in favour of a government steering role in markets. Moreover, some middle-income countries, with manufacturing sectors shrinking in the face of East Asian competition, have recently shown renewed interest in industrial policy. Finally, parts of the World Bank have recently begun to operationalize industrial policy, under the banner of ‘building competitive industries’ (industrial policy by another name), as has not been the case since the mid 1980s. The combination of these several forces may herald the emergence of new global norms in favour of a more ‘developmental’ role of the state.     

Financial Globalization,Social Exclusion and Financial Crisis

This paper suggests one set of mechanisms that ties financial globalization processes to local dynamics of financial inclusion or exclusion. Specifically, this paper explores the worldwide reconsideration of financial firms’ strategies that has accompanied financial globalization. It is shown that the neoliberal and asymmetric‐information approaches to credit markets and financial crises in developing economies overlook these dimensions of financial globalization because of their tendency to focus on representative credit markets. Banks’ strategic shift has led to the global homogenization and stratification of financial practices—and this in turn has been a key driver of processes of financial exclusion. Financial exclusion then involves bifurcation within financial markets, so that different markets serve different portions of the household and business population. This analysis suggests a reconstruction of Minsky’s microfoundational model of the origins of financial fragility and crisis, which shifts from Minsky’s emphasis on a representative borrower–lender relationship to a situation of borrower–lender relationships in bifurcated markets.     

Post-2008 British Industrial Policy and Constructivist Political Economy: New Directions and New Tensions

The article serves to introduce a number of recent changes in the practices and rationale of British industrial policy since 2008. I observe a shift towards a stronger role for the government and for agencies of industrial policy in the provision of industrial finance, and towards an increasingly discretionary and strategic approach to industrial policy intervention, both of which stand in tension with the neoliberal ‘coordinative discourse’ that continues to structure macroeconomic policy in the post-2008 context. I suggest that this tension is indicative of the emergence of two competing ‘crisis diagnoses’ in government after 2008; one reflecting the neoliberal coordinative discourse that structured economic policymaking prior to 2008, the other at odds with this neoliberal crisis diagnosis. I argue that constructivist analytical frameworks on crisis and political–economic change are insufficiently developed to accommodate these findings. I therefore reflect upon some conceptual and empirical implications that the findings raise for a constructivist analysis of economic policy in the post-2008 context in Britain, before concluding that a more contingent, contested and, crucially, incomplete process of re-alignment in the ideas that structure economic policymaking is underway in Britain than is generally acknowledged.     

The Narrative of Complexity in the Crisis of Finance: Epistemological Challenge and Macroprudential Policy Response

Official accounts of the 2007–8 financial crisis have recurrently referred to ‘complexity’ in the nature of the securities transacted and in the structure of the financial industry as a way to convey difficulty to understand or apprehend, and thus to predict financial dynamics and regulate financial institutions. On the one hand, the complexity metaphor – as other crisis metaphors commonly do – naturalised turmoil and obscured agency as it subjectified complexity itself as a key driver of instability. On the other hand, it marked a departure from narratives of recent crises insofar as it has pointed explicitly to an epistemological crisis underlying financial turmoil. Such framing of the crisis yielded a powerful theoretical challenge to classical neoliberal assumptions about the exogenous nature of financial turmoil and helped shape a new consensus around the imperative of macroprudential regulation. However, the embrace of the complexity lens may remain relatively ambiguous. Though highlighting properties that render the financial system ‘complex’ and hence unpredictable, it ambitions to ‘manage’ complexity with better methodological tools.     

What matters in the finance–growth nexus of advanced economies? Evidence from OECD countries

Over the last decades, a large strand of finance and growth literature has provided ample evidence on the importance of financial deepening for economic development. Yet, recently, the focus of public debate has shifted towards the role of the financial system structure, an area in which empirical research remains relatively sparse and exploratory in nature. With this article, we aim to contribute to that debate by analysing the role the financial system structure plays in economic growth and risk. Focusing on stock markets and studying OECD economies over 1994–2013, we find that, ceteris paribus, financial systems with relatively larger stock markets facilitate economic growth and dampen economic risk. Our findings remain robust under application of instrumental variable and system generalized method of moments estimators, as well as when we use an alternative definition of stock market development, estimate median regressions, examine relatively high-frequency annual data, control for systemic banking crises or apply quadratic specifications. We find no such effect for private bond markets or private credit volume. Overall, our results suggest that financial system structure matters for the economic development of advanced economies and highlight the importance of a debate about the optimal structure of an economy’s financial system.     

Industrial Policy and Islamic Finance

Debates on industrial policy have typically focused on interventions in the ‘real’ sector to facilitate the transformation of a resources-based economy to one that is based on manufacturing. Although the financial sector has always figured strongly in these discussions, its development, or rather repression, is almost always considered in the context of serving the ‘real’ sector. In contrast, this paper contributes to the emerging literature on government policies to develop financial sectors into independent and internationally competitive sources of economic growth on their own right through an analysis of the development of Islamic finance in Malaysia. The paper argues that the emergence of Islamic finance in Malaysia, and the country's evolution into a key player of the sector in the global market, can be attributed to developmental efforts or industrial policies adopted by the government. The case of Islamic finance in Malaysia suggests the continuing relevance of industrial policy for developmental purposes. More importantly, it demonstrates that developing countries can chart a path towards services-led growth, the next frontier in economic development.     

Financial Liberalization as a Process of Flawed Institutional Change

I argue that the financial liberalization of the last decades, which resulted in a worldwide crisis, relied on an institutional change that ill-shaped actors’ behavior so as to let them enter into unsustainable speculative activities at the expense of macro-stability. To support such an assertion, I draw upon a specific Veblen-Minsky approach to a credit-money economy and its endogenous fragilities. I also maintain that, when financial markets are liberalized and private-interestsrelated self-regulation replaces public macro-prudential supervision, the financial system undergoes institutional deadlock and the ensuing confusion is transformed into a market gridlock. Markets then become unable to recover without public rescue operations of banks. The subsequent negative economic and social consequences are beyond the limits of any acceptable liberal ideology and scientific understanding. Therefore, systemic stability calls for a tighter macro-regulatory framework to remove the domination of speculative finance over economic decisions and activities.     

The Confidence Trap: Japan’s Past Bubble and China’s Recent Bubble

This paper explores the origin of China’s recent credit and asset boom by comparing it with the Japanese bubble economy in the late 1980s by focusing on the asymmetric pattern of financial liberalisation under high savings. It argues that (1) both cases show a ‘confidence trap’ in that policy-makers of the government shared a complacent mindset that they can achieve the optimal mix of market liberalisation and repression, while believing that their political economic system is fundamentally different from others; (2) Such complacent confidence precipitated the supply-side driven financial reforms, in which both governments tried to diversify the credit channels of bank deposits by promoting non-bank financial intermediaries; (3) Exogenous shocks played a pivotal role in enforcing the government to take aggressive monetary easing and fiscal expansionary measures. But the Chinese case is different from the Japanese case in that (1) local politics has promoted a ‘too secure to fail’ situation in which rent-seeking activities are difficult to be detected, thus aggravating the hidden systemic risks; (2) China needs to liberalise its capital account with the more strengthened macroprudential regulatory governance, as the global foreign exchange markets have drastically changed from the period of the 1980s.     

试论金融危机下我国的金融生态及其优化

金融作为一国经济的核心,对于社会的持续健康发展具有极其重要的作用。近年来,我国金融市场快速发展,为我国经济发展起到了积极的推动作用。但随着世界经济形势的不断变化以及金融市场风险的不断加剧,特别是本轮金融危机对全球金融市场的重大影响,使得我国金融生态环境受到多方面的冲击。文章在分析金融危机对我国金融生态环境造成的冲击的基础上,通过构建评价我国金融生态环境的指标模型,提出了恢复和优化当前我国金融生态环境的政策建议。     

究竟是什么决定了一国的金融体系结构

文章基于1990-2009年间78个主要国家和地区的面板数据,对影响一国金融体系结构选择的相关因素进行了系统的实证分析。结果表明,一国金融体系结构的选择不仅受宏观经济状况和金融发展的影响,同时也受社会制度文化的显著影响。从宏观经济看,金融体系结构的动态变化主要与经济发展的速度相关,而经济发展的程度则主要影响金融体系的总规模;从金融发展看,效率和开放是金融体系结构"市场化"的两大动力;从文化制度看,崇尚规则和权威的制度文化更容易孕育出"银行主导型"的金融体系,而崇尚自由和民主的制度文化则更容易孕育出"市场主导型"的金融体系。     

The Shape of ‘Rising Powers’ to Come? The Antinomies of Growth and Neoliberal Development in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The short-term GDP growth-based economic success of the BRICS has spawned a trend of grouping large emerging market economies under shared monikers. The proliferation of a wide array of labels – from MINTs to VISTAs – within political and financial circles has been accompanied by a growing scholarly interest in the study of these ‘emerging markets’ and future ‘rising powers’. This paper discusses the literature on Turkey’s ‘rising power’ status to problematise the conceptual and analytical parameters that shape these wider debates. Accordingly, I argue that the established parameters are wholly based in, and in turn reproduce, a neoliberal conception of development which prioritises a narrowly construed metric of economic progress based on GDP growth, while simultaneously ignoring the associated socio-economic and environmental costs. The paper interrogates the ways in which select macroeconomic indicators have been deployed to legitimise neoliberal reform in Turkey and utilises this case study to mount a methodological challenge to the relevant IR/IPE literatures that conceptualise ‘emerging markets’ and ‘rising powers’ from growth-oriented perspectives.     

The impact of institutions on financial development: Evidence from East Asian countries

This paper examines the impact of institutions on regional financial development using a panel data model of 11 East Asian countries during 1996–2017. It divides the institutional factors into six economic factors and six legal‐political factors. The analysis demonstrates that the legal‐political institutional factors have a stronger impact on financial development than the economic institutional factors in East Asia. Improvement in institutional quality such as fiscal freedom, business freedom, control of corruption, government effectiveness, regulatory quality and rule of law can promote financial development. Improvements of these institutional factors facilitate the ability of enterprises to allocate resources and improve the strength of business operations, thereby reducing transaction costs and making the financial operating environment fairer and more efficient. With the improvement of institutional factors, financial development will have more opportunities to develop better. Institutional impacts are more pronounced in the financial development in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar than in the other countries such as China, Japan, Korea and Singapore.     

Income inequality and credit expansion in post-communist countries

There is an on-going debate on the antecedents and consequences of income inequality. Recent studies find that income inequality was a cause of the recent financial crisis. However, the findings on the inequality–indebtedness relationship are mixed and based on analyses of developed countries. The aim of this research is to test how income inequality influences borrowing in post-communist countries, whose financial markets are not very developed, which has important implications for income inequality. Therefore, we include financial system development in the analysis. We base our analysis on state-level panel data and find that income inequality will increase indebtedness in the private sector. However, these results are model and region specific. To preclude higher income inequality and the emergence of a financial crisis, policies should be directed towards improving the role of financial intermediaries and stock markets.     

Beyond ‘Poverty Reduction through Good Governance’: The New Political Economy of Development in Africa

The new political economy of development, characterised by the rising powers' new resource finds in many poor countries and the financial crisis, has driven development ideas and practices towards a paradigm shift, moving it beyond the post-Washington Consensus which marked the high point of development's ‘Poverty Reduction through Good Governance’ agenda. This has important implications for the extent to which developing countries remain governed by the institutional and ideological imperatives of development. Optimists suggest that this could herald a new era of sovereignty that enables African countries to take fuller control of their governance and development priorities, including a shift towards a ‘southern consensus’ around structural transformation, whilst pessimists argue that the hegemony of orthodox development ideas has only been partially reordered and that new problems of sovereignty are now emerging. Insights from Uganda suggest that both of these scenarios are currently unfolding, leaving the outcomes uncertain and much to play for. What remains of the ‘good governance’ agenda has yet to adapt itself to this new politics of development, which requires the emergence of new forms of developmental state in Africa.     

金融发展、债务治理与公司价值——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

文章运用新制度经济学的基本理论,以我国沪深两市A股上市公司2000-2006年的数据为样本,实证分析了金融发展促进经济增长的微观作用机制.研究发现,若债务比例增加1%,金融发展水平高的地区与低的地区相比,公司市场价值平均多提高[作者单位].54%,并且,债务融资与公司价值的正相关关系只在金融发展水平高的地区才存在.这表明,金融发展水平对债务治理作用的发挥有重要影响,公司所处地区的金融发展程度越高,债务治理的作用越强,越有利于提高公司的价值.     

The New ‘Passive Revolution’ of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the ‘Sustainable Development’ of Neoliberal Capitalism

This paper analyses the rapidly emerging discourse of a green economy based on green growth. It highlights inherent conflicts and contradictions of this discourse such as the myth of decoupling growth from the environment, pollution generations and resource consumption. Using key theoretical constructs of both Gramsci and Polanyi, the paper argues that the green economy/growth discourse can be seen as a Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ whereby the dominant sustainable development discourse, subsumed by capitalist hegemony, is protected in the context of global environmental, economic and development crises. The ‘neoliberalising of nature’, or in other words, the privatisation, marketisation and commodification of nature, akin to Polanyi's fictitious commodities, continues and intensifies with green economy/growth strategies. Greening the economy and associated strategies of green growth divert attention from the social and political dimensions of sustainability and issues of social and international justice. In this way, the inexorable march or ‘sustainable development’ of neoliberal capitalism is maintained. This paper goes on to argue that contesting the claims of green economy/growth discourse through political struggles by civil society against the neoliberalisation of nature is a sign of a slowly emerging counter-hegemonic ‘double movement’ which challenges capitalist hegemony and the commodification of society–nature relations.     

我国各省市金融垄断程度判断——基于金融勒纳指数的分析

文章以勒纳指数作为衡量指标,对中国各省市金融市场垄断程度的差异进行实证研究,认为虽然经过多年的市场经济建设,但中国金融业整体上仍然表现出明显的垄断特征.各省市的金融市场垄断程度具有明显的不平衡性,且与各自经济发展水平呈负相关关系,即在经济发展水平较高的省市金融垄断程度较低,反之则金融垄断程度高.这表明金融作为现代经济的核心,中国的金融市场化改革能够显著推动经济的发展.文章建议可以从加速市场开放、打破地区封锁和资源配置的效率导向等方面加以完善,以降低因金融市场垄断而造成的社会福利损失.     

Fiscal policy and capital mobility: the construction of economic policy rectitude in Britain and France

This research examines the regulatory response of the European Union to the global financial crisis, addressing the questions of whether, how and why the global financial crisis has changed the ‘old’ politics of financial services regulation in the EU and resulted in the emergence of a ‘new’ politics. It is argued that, with a good dose of political opportunism and ‘anti-free market’ rhetoric, a continental advocacy coalition sponsoring a ‘market-shaping’ regulatory approach has capitalised on the crisis, tipping the balance of regulatory power in the EU in its favour, as compared to the pre-crisis situation.     

Post-Crisis Experiments in Development Finance Architectures: A Hirschmanian Perspective On ‘Productive Incoherence’

Abstract

The Asian and especially the global crisis of 2008 have catalyzed decentralization of the developing world’s financial governance architecture. I understand this state of affairs via the concept of “productive incoherence” which is apparent in a denser, multilayered development financial architecture that is emerging as a consequence of heterogeneous practical adjustments to changing circumstances rather than as the embodiment of a coherent doctrine. Drawing on Albert Hirschman, I argue that the absence of an encompassing theoretical blueprint for a new economic system—i.e. a new “ism” to replace neoliberalism—is in fact a vitally important virtue. If we cannot live without a new “ism,” I propose “Hirschmanian Possibilism” as a new doctrine—one that rejects an overarching theoretical framework from which to deduce the singly appropriate institutional structure of the economy. Hirschmanian Possibilism asserts instead the value of productive incoherence as a framework for pursuing democratic, ethically viable development institutions.     

Doing Away with the Sovereign: Neoliberalism and the Promotion of Market Discipline in European Economic Governance

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a critical reading of market discipline and its limitations as a mechanism in European economic governance. Consistent with neoliberal beliefs about market-based governance, the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is premised on the functioning of the government bond market as a fiscal-policy discipliner. However, the operation of market discipline requires that neither governments nor their private creditors can rely on an authority to bail them out. It, therefore, precludes the kinds of intervention by Eurozone’s supranational institutions witnessed during the euro crisis. In the post-crisis context, efforts to strengthen market discipline continue to be frustrated by the growing reliance of financial institutions on government bond markets as well as the European Central Bank’s (ECB) active participation in those markets. Having undermined the credibility of the market as an autonomous and apolitical mechanism of discipline, European economic governance struggles to come to terms with the rise of a supranational ‘economic sovereign’ in the Eurozone.