Financialization and Capital Accumulation

In the last decades, financial activities have grown disproportionately compared to other activities. This aroused a growing discussion in Keynesian and Marxian economists about the structures of modern capitalism and the role played by the dominance of finance on capital accumulation. After a brief review of the main issues, we discuss some mechanisms explored in this literature connecting financialization and aggregate investment.     

How Subordinate Financialization Shapes Urban Development: The Rise and Fall of Warsaw's Służewiec Business District

This article studies the development of Warsaw's S?u?ewiec neighbourhood, Poland's largest business district, as a case of real estate financialization. We argue that the neighbourhood's chaotic ‘de‐contextualized’ growth was shaped by Poland's semi‐peripheral position in the global economy on the one hand—enabling a process of subordinate financialization—and legacies of state socialism on the other. In so doing, we mobilize research on peripheral financialization and global economic hierarchies, and studies of post‐socialism to enhance debates about real estate financialization. Commercial real estate—and office development in particular—is a crucial domain in which contemporary core–periphery structures are produced and negotiated. A key function of subordinate financialization is to absorb globally mobile capital—the product of financialization in the core. The case of S?u?ewiec shows that only by considering the interplay of global hierarchies (Poland's position as capital absorbent), local dynamics (fragmented urban development, which was characterized by competition among these unequal municipalities, with local growth coalitions in some municipalities, but not in others) and specific historical legacies (Warsaw's socialist‐time functional organization and its transformation, which weakened the city) can we fully understand the specific dynamics that shape real estate financialization in different places.     

Lisbon After the Crisis: From Credit‐fuelled Suburbanization to Tourist‐driven Gentrification

This article examines Lisbon's post‐crisis transition from a once dominant process of suburban expansion enabled by abundant credit to one of ongoing gentrification of its historic centre. In my research, I draw on quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate the remarkable growth of the metropolitan area's population and dwelling stock until the global financial crisis—which affected the Portuguese economy in the course of a process of financialization that relied heavily on the housing industry—and the intensity of urban rehabilitation in subsequent years. However, there is evidence that the latter has not halted nor reduced the loss of long‐term residents in the historic centre, as tourists and other international gentrifiers occupy the upgraded dwelling stock amid an escalation of house prices and rents. The specific contribution of this research lies in the link that it establishes between Lisbon's ongoing process of inner‐city gentrification and the lack of suburban expansion after 2007. By showing that the credit crunch triggered a shift in the geographic location of real‐estate capital that materialized in a new urban development model, this research adds an empirical layer to the study of the spatial effects of the crisis and contributes to the literature on the subsequent restructuring of southern European housing markets.     

Financialization,Urban Governance and the Planning System: Utilizing ‘Development Viability’ as a Policy Narrative for the Liberalization of Ireland's Post‐Crash Planning System

Drawing upon the Irish case, this article explores the interaction between the financialized economy and the urban planning system. While considerable scholarship has examined the financialization of real estate, it remains unclear how planning systems are being repurposed to facilitate a finance‐led regime of urban growth or how the ‘real estate–financial complex’ seeks to enact planning policy transformations that support its interests. This article explores how such actors have advanced the concept of ‘financial viability of development’ as a means of influencing the post‐crisis re‐regulation of Irish planning policy. This group has argued that housing construction in post‐crash Ireland is unviable given the high development finance costs, onerous planning gain contributions and the lack of development certainty in the planning process. As such, housing construction has been at an all‐time‐low, leading to a new crisis in affordable housing provision. In response, a complicit state has further liberalized the planning system, introducing an array of policies that are evermore facilitative of development interests. Empirical findings, based on interviews with developers, lobbyists and planners, emphasize the importance of informal access to policymakers, the wielding of ‘expert knowledge’ and media management to co‐opt the state into adopting financial viability within planning policymaking.     

Inequality,emulation and debt: The occurrence of different growth regimes in the age of financialization in a stock-flow consistent model

In the era of financialization, increasing income inequality could be observed in most developed and many developing countries. Despite similar developments in inequality, the growth performance and drivers for growth differed markedly among countries, allowing clusters of different growth regimes to be identified. Among them are 2 extreme types: the debt-led private-demand boom and the export-led mercantilist economies. Whereas the former rely mainly on credit-financed household consumption in order to compensate for the potential lack of demand (associated with the depressing effect of financialisation), the latter rely on net exports as the main driver of aggregate demand. Using a stock-flow consistent model it will be demonstrated how increasing inequality, depending on a countries institutional structure and regulatory framework, affects growth differently, explaining the occurrence of both regime types.     

对经济全球化以及金融化问题的研究

随着我国经济的快速发展,国家越来越重视经济全球化以及金融化问题。为了进一步提升经济全球化分析的有效性,需要根据实际情况对民族化、贸易自由化等问题进行综合分析,将技术、品牌国产化作为经济金融工作的主体思想,抓住经济全球化和金融化的机遇,直面其所带来的挑战。因此,论文针对经济全球化以及金融化问题进行简要分析,并提出合理化建议。     

Land questions in the 21st Century Postcolony

The question of land, its commodification and role in capital accumulation has come to occupy centre stage in political economy since the last decade of the 20th century. Such concerns are however not confined to the agrarian question as in classical political economy but have emerged primarily in the wake of land being integrated into circuits of speculative capital accumulation constituting novel processes of dispossession. This financialization of land and accompanying processes of dispossession, often justified through neoliberal developmentalism, not only has consequences for agrarian actors and ecologies but also poses questions about the role of land in current accumulation dynamic, especially in transitioning economies in the global South. Based on a review of three recently published books on the contemporary land question and politics around it in India, this essay explores how such incorporations and dispossessions are driven by multiple developmental imperatives and asks what such logics mean for conceptualizing the land question in the 21st century.     

Income Distribution,Household Debt and Growth in Modern Financialized Economies

Abstract:

We analyze some core features of the institutional transformation of the Canadian and U.S. economies over the last half century, as they became increasingly financialized economies resting on household consumption as the key contributor to economic growth, despite weak growth in real wages and personal disposable income. This growth in consumption spending is highly fragile not only because it is a debt-led growth that has relied on an unsustainable expansion of household indebtedness largely dependent on credit bubbles in the housing market, but also because of the perverse form of this indebtedness. Studied from the angle of disaggregated household consumption/saving behavior, it is the poorest and most vulnerable households who have been building up unsustainable debt, thereby presaging increasing financial fragility and crises.     

区域金融发展与经济增长关系实证研究——以山东省为例

区域金融发展与经济增长关系的实证是金融发展理论研究的深化。以山东省为研究区域,通过构建反映区域金融发展与经济增长全貌的指标体系,运用主成分分析、基于VAR系统的多重协整检验等计量方法和统计技术,可得到四组八个协整方程。实证结果表明:山东金融机构规模,股票市场发展,经济金融化综合水平与经济增长和投资之间均存在长期均衡关系,且为正相关;但金融机构低效率却影响了经济增长。对这一实证结果的经济解释,能够为山东进一步深化区域金融体制改革提供有益的启示。     

减税激励、融资约束与企业脱实向虚

采用2009—2020年A股上市公司数据,从“脱实”“向虚”两个角度,探讨减税激励在微观层面的治理效应。研究结果表明,减税激励缓解企业“脱实向虚”,融资约束在二者关系间发挥中介作用。进一步研究发现,较高的管理层持股和股权制衡度正向调节减税激励与企业“脱实向虚”的关系。异质性分析发现,在非国企、低政府补助水平的企业中,减税激励的作用更明显。此外,减税激励对非制造业企业金融化趋势缓解更明显,对制造业企业实体投资的促进作用更显著。研究结果为政府调整税收方针政策,推动实体经济发展提供了经验证据。