Finanzialisierung und die Entstehung der Eurokrise: Die Perspektive der Vergleichenden Kapitalismusforschung

The article provides an explanation of the Eurozone crisis by focusing on the process of financialization that interacts in different ways with diverging varieties of capitalism. By doing this it contributes to the emerging discussion on country-specific variations of financialization and their interactions. The strongly increasing importance of the financial system has led—together with the abolition of the exchange rate risk—to a strongly increasing private indebtedness in the Southern Eurozone economies and to the emergence of a consumption-driven growth regime. It has developed a symbiosis with the export-driven German growth regime, as far as parts of the demand created have benefitted the German export sectors and German banks have become important providers of credit in the Southern Eurozone. The reduction of credit provision after the global financial crisis has led to the stagnation of the Southern economies.     

“Left Behind?” Financialization and Income Inequality Between the Affluent,Middle Class,and The Poor

There is increasing scholarly evidence that financialization has contributed to rising income inequality, especially by concentrating income among the affluent and rich. There is less empirical research examining who is losing out to the affluent. This paper fills this gap by examining how three measures of financialization (finance, insurance, and real estate or FIRE employment; credit expansion; and financial crises) affect upper-tail (measured as the ratio between the 90th and 50th income percentiles) and lower-tail (measured as the ratio between the 50th and 10th income percentiles) income inequality. Using concepts from economic sociology and the social stratification literature, I develop a perspective that links financialization to income inequality by creating more unequal market incomes while simultaneously reducing redistribution and social transfers. I analyze disposable household income data (after taxes and transfers) from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and other public sources like the OECD from 16 affluent nations between the years 1981 and 2011, and I use an unbalanced panel design due to LIS data coverage. I find that the relative incomes of both the middle class and the poor are hurt by financialization (strongest evidence tied to FIRE employment); however, relative incomes of the poor are especially sensitive to financialization.     

Finanzialisierung,Demokratie und Gesellschaft – zehn Jahre nach Beginn der Finanzkrise

This introduction to the special issue—ten years after the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers and the beginning of a worldwide financial, economic, and debt crisis—reflects on the extent to which the economic crisis affected a turning point in society overall. The current state of research into the relationship between financialization, democracy, and social conditions strongly suggests that while the processes of financialization that favored the emergence of a crisis were influenced by the financial crisis, they were not completely reversed. In fact, the financial market regulation, which was changed in response to the crisis, did not exert any modifying pressure in terms of a restructuring of the financial system. An epochal shift in financial market regulation therefore cannot be identified from the steps taken in the reform process. Elseways there is clear evidence that the financial crisis has had a lasting impact on the European integration process, confidence in democracy, and political culture. The financial crisis is therefore likely to be perceived as a historical watershed, mainly due to its impact on societal areas beyond the financial system itself.     

THE LIMITS TO GROWTH

This article examines aggregate real estate firm mortality rates in a group of metropolitan areas during the 1960s and 1970s. Real estate firms play a critical role in the local growth machine, yet no research has examined the environmental limits which these firms experience. A set of ecological hypotheses are constructed which detail the influence of task and institutional environments on aggregate firm mortality rates. The findings show the sensitivity of firms to their local context, although standard market forces are not operating. In addition, period differences suggest that larger societal forces interact with the local land market, increasing aggregate mortality rates over time. Results support recent observations of the local land market made by the "new urban sociology."     

Domesticating insurance,financializing family lives: the case of private health insurance for children in Finland

This article explores the domestication of a financial instrument that is much used in contemporary Finland, but that most of its users do not primarily think about in terms of being a financial instrument: the private health insurance for children. In Finland, all children are covered by social insurance and are entitled to free public health service with very low costs, if any. Yet, some 40 percent of families want to supplement this service with private products. Many fear that the popularity of the private health insurance for children contributes to a vicious circle that ends up weakening the legitimacy of, and the service given by, the public health sector; inequality in the face of health risks threatens to be aggravated, as well. Therefore, this financial instrument has become an object of political controversy. The main question of the article is: how do economic, political and moral valuations become intertwined in the domestication of insurance? The concept of ‘domestication’ is found helpful for analysing the pragmatics of valuation and for appreciating the dynamics and the heterogeneity of forces at play when financialization influences everyday life. The study argues that when financial instruments are appropriated they are also transformed; thus, they should not be viewed as homogeneous tools that have similar effects in all contexts of use. The main empirical materials studied are interviews with families with and without private health insurance policies for their children.     

Responsibility,planning and risk management: moralizing everyday finance through financial education

The individualization, privatization and marketization of risk management represent a fundamental dimension of the financialization of everyday life. As individuals are required to engage with financial products and services as the main way of protecting themselves from risks and uncertainties, their economic welfare and security are construed as depending largely on their own financial decisions. Within this setting, the concept of financial literacy and accompanying practices of financial education have emerged as a prominent institutional field handling the formulation and communication of the attributes and dispositions that arguably constitute the proper financial actor. This article analyzes financial education programmes currently conducted by state agencies in Israel, examining the notions and principles they articulate when defining and explaining proper financial conduct. The study indicates that moral themes and categories occupy a salient place in the formulation of the character traits that constitute the desired literate financial actor. Notions of individual responsibility, planning ahead and rational risk management are presented not merely as instrumental resources, but as moral imperatives. Through these notions, the programmes moralize a broad array of everyday practices of personal finance such as saving, investing, borrowing and budget management, thereby connecting the sphere of financial matters to the domain of moral virtues. Offering a representation of particular modes of financial conduct as constitutive components of morally virtuous personhood, these practices imbue the financial field as a whole, especially its current generalized logic of individualized and marketized risk management, with moral meanings, hence contributing to the normalization and depoliticization of the financialization of everyday life.     

Real estate in the home country: Why Polish migrants keep properties in Poland

Real estate is often the most visible contribution that emigrants add to their home country's landscape. Such properties serve different functions, from rental investments, through migrant families' homes, to holiday homes or empty spaces. Economists often view real estate through financial lens, frowning upon vacant houses. I argue that keeping vacant houses is often caused by social and emotional factors rather than financial ones. This article uses data from 120 qualitative interviews with Polish EU migrants and juxtaposes them with the typology of remittance houses proposed by Boccagni and Erdal. The data, combined with the theoretical perspective of Neoclassical Economics, New Economics of Labour Migration, and Grzymała-Kazłowska's concept of social anchoring, allow me to improve the typology. The updated typology systematises the functions of and reasons why migrants keep properties in their home countries and provides a sound frame for future research and policymaking.     

Ambiguous incorporations: microfinance and global governmentality

In the spring of 2007 an event dramatically reshaped conversations relating to microfinance. This event was the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Mexico's largest microfinance organization, Compartamos. The IPO, as this article suggests, is indicative or a broader trend through which microfinance is increasingly becoming financialized, increasingly becoming governable as a financial object. This is important at one level because it crystallizes some of the key issues at stake as microfinance becomes increasingly more reliant on global capital markets. At another level, however, the Compatarmos case is significant because of the conceptual issues it raises in relation to global finance. The main argument I put forward in this article is that the Compatarmos case – and the process of financialization it represents – is important because it allows us to glimpse global finance, and the question of global financial governance, as a decentred process in formation. Drawing on a Foucauldian notion of governmentality, I argue that the Compatarmos case orbits around two processes; processes of incorporation and differentiation. In this context, the Compartamos case implies the importance of analyses that can make global finance visible as a diverse and mundane object that is never settled in any final kind of way.     

我国房地产内在发展路径分析

我国经济发展是房地产市场中长期稳中向好的支撑.我国的城镇化发展战略会迎来新一轮有效的住房需求.促进房地产市场的稳定发展,必须把握房地产市场的发展规律,增强政策制定的合理性和科学性,引导房地产开发商和消费者的理性行为.     

Institutional legacies in TNCs and their management through training academies: the case of transnational law firms in Italy

In this article we highlight the effects of heterogeneous institutional contexts on transnational professional service firms, a relatively poorly studied issue. Specifically, we provide empirical analysis of how the specificities of the Italian institutional context affect the activities of English legal professional service firms in Milan. This reveals the intimate connection between a variety of capitalism, place specific workplace cultures and practices, and the institution‐related challenges transnational professional service firms and all transnational corporations (TNCs) face. We also reveal the way institutionally generated differences at the level of work practices are managed in transnational law firms through worldwide training programmes designed to ‘govern’ the practices of workers in different parts of the TNC's network. This emphasizes the importance of studying attempts to manage institutional heterogeneity at the level of workplace practices, something often missed in existing mesoscale studies of TNC governance structures. Consequently, we highlight detailed empirical archaeologies that explore the direct links between institutions and practices as an important component of future research on the effects of institutions on TNCs.     

Service vs. manufacturing: how to address more effectively eco-innovation public policies by disentangling the different characteristics of industries

Eco-innovation is actually a fashionable topic, and several researchers are working on understanding the defining characteristics of firms that consider the environment as a priority when innovating. To date most of these studies have been carried out on manufacturing industries. This article investigates the similarities and differences among service and manufacturing firms. An empirical analysis of a sample of 5509 Spanish companies shows that the variables affecting the eco-innovative orientation of firms are quite similar. Results reveal that manufacturing firms have higher orientation toward the environment than service firms. Furthermore, highly polarized positions in environmental aspects can be found. Despite the limitations of the study, conclusions may help public policy to encourage environmental proactivity in service industry and innovation.     

我国房地产融资问题研究

房地产业是我国的支柱产业之一,其健康发展对国民经济的发展起着重要作用,加之房地产业是资金密集型行业,因此有效地解决该行业的融资问题是促进其健康发展的重要条件。本文从国内房地产业融资现状入手,分析当前单一融资模式形成的原因及影响,考察了国内外房地产业除银行贷款外的主要融资渠道：房地产信托、房地产产业基金、住房抵押贷款证券化的涵义和特征,并将三种融资方式进行对比,提出适合我国国情的阶段融资方案及政策建议。     

关于上海若干要素市场发展的思考与对策

上海的要素市场是从20世纪90年代初为适应上海建设经济中心城市而发展起来的,现已初步形成了有形市场和无形市场相结合、全国市场和地方市场相结合、综合性市场与专业性市场相结合的具有相当水平软硬件设施为基础的要素市场体系,但是在要素市场建设和发展中还存在不平衡、不完善、不到位等方面的问题。本文主要分析上海若干要素市场发展的现状与特点,并提出了相应的发展对策。即：上海科技市场要按照构建完整的创新体系的要求,建设全国性的大市场;上海金融市场要按照实现国际金融中心的要求,融入国际性的金融市场体系;上海文化市场要按照统一开放竞争有序的要求,进一步发展文化创意产业;上海服务市场要按照实施服务经济战略的要求,促进长江三角洲一体化大市场的发展;上海房地产市场要按照完善住房保障体系与房地产市场体系建设的要求,在调整中发展。     

Matière à spéculer : les produits laitiers saisis par l’écrit

This article seeks to describe the work of dairy products speculators. It reveals the effort, cognitive and material, that enables these actors to handle the widening of their range of action, but also the contraction in the timescale of that action, two dynamics characteristic of the financialization process currently underway in certain international agricultural markets. In contrast with certain works critical of finance, which report a decoupling of the “financial sphere” from the “real economy”, it reveals – through close attention to the graphic media employed – agents who are aware of the materiality of the products they manipulate, despite their growing distanciation, both cognitive and geographical, from the target of their activity.     

Social Impact Bonds und der Disput um die Wohlfahrt

Social Impact Bonds are novel financial mechanisms for social welfare programs. What’s new about them is that they include professional financial investors into state provision of welfare. Its promise is to help states save public money in times of austerity by becoming more effective and selling their risk of failed social investments to the financial market. Against it, its critics see a further mode of capitalization of the public sphere (Landnahme). This article investigates Social Impact Bond s between the poles of de- and repolitization. On the one hand, the Social Impact Bond prevents public and democratic debates over welfare by means of privatization and methodical rationalization, on the other hand it addresses the welfare state and public expenditures to be important again. This is new, after decades of diminishing welfare states. Which sort of dispute the Social Impact Bond will bring about depends on the institutional context of its implementation.     

Zwei Dimensionen der Internationalisierung: Eine empirische Analyse deutscher Grossunternehmen

In order to analyze the impact of internationalization on national institutions, methods of measuring the degree of internationalization are required. The article presents a method for measuring the degree of internationalization of firms. We assume that the internationalization of firms has several dimensions which cannot be combined into one index, and therefore, have to be distinguished. The first dimension refers to the production activities of firms abroad; the second is measured by the proximity of the firm to international capital. Using a group of the 100 largest German companies both dimensions are empirically tested. Factor analysis supports the assumption that both dimensions, the product-oriented and the financial dimension, do not co-vary and can be separated. Using the measurements we can rank firms into higher and lower degrees of internationalization.     

Housing markets performing class: middle‐class cultures and market professionals in Chile

This article takes a cultural economy approach to the analysis of housing markets as spaces in which class cultures are performed. The design and marketing of real estate projects are understood as the outcome of the interplay of different narratives, practices and materials involving cultural and economic calculations. I explore one particular type of cultural knowledge used during the production and sale of houses: the meanings of class and social mobility. I argue that housing markets and housing production involve the interrelation of several cultural calculations on class and social mobility. In other words, meanings of class and social mobility are instrumentally produced and used in the design, production and marketing of real estate. I describe how cultural calculations about class are inscribed into house location, house design and real estate advertising and marketing devices. Indeed, it is argued that in designing ‘real estate’ projects, agents and executives work as ‘sociologists at large’: they create and perform new meanings of class and social mobility.     

外部冲击下中国援外工作的金融化战略推进

在论证我国援外进行金融化运作的必要性和紧迫性的基础上，重点论述我国援外金融化运作的重要途径，提出援外结算人民币化、建立中国对外援助银行等8个具体建议，并建议我国制定明确的援外金融目标。     

上海新金融发展的总体思路研究

近年来,随着经济体制改革的不断深化,我国的金融机构从一元化到多元化,金融机构之间、金融机构与实体经济部门之间的合作日益明显,合作创新的金融工具不断涌现。我国金融创新系统逐渐由独立创新阶段向合作创新阶段转化。为了避免金融创新系统陷入低效锁定的状态,我国在建设和发展金融创新系统时应考虑以下问题:注重新金融系统的整体科学设计,强调政府主导的强制性创新与微观创新主体主导的诱致性创新的结合,重视新金融系统的环境建设。     

构建我国房地产市场健康发展的长效机制

我国房地产调控经历了“支持→谨慎→抑制→再支持→再抑制”的5个阶段,这几轮调控虽然在短期内起到了一定的效果,但未建立起着眼于房地产市场长远发展的机制,并且由于政策反复而影响市场预期,致使房地产市场难以长期稳定的发展。要构建房地产市场健康运行的长效机制,必须从国家层面深化改革,必须从住房制度、土地制度、税收分配制度、金融制度、财税制度、房地产项目资本金制度、商品房预售制度、土地储备制度入手实施改革。