Interest in the concept of financialisation has gained traction in both developed and emerging markets. With roots embedded in the economic theory of neo-liberalism, the concept of financialisation can be broadly defined as the growing importance of financial instruments and the financial sector. A large body of empirical work in developed markets has generally indicated a negative association between financialisation and various socio-economic indicators. However, the limited empirical evidence in emerging markets has proved inconsistent. This study examines the presence of financialisation in South Africa since the start of the democratic era covering 1994 to 2017, and explores the relationship between financialisation and several key socio-economic factors in the country including economic growth, investment, inequality, unemployment and innovation. Financialisation is measured using two generally accepted proxies - the contribution of the financial sector to total value added in the economy and the percentage of people employed in the financial sector. In addition, two other measures are used based on the work of Krippner (2005) with the first the ratio of portfolio income generated by non-financial firms relative to revenue yielded by productive activities and the second the ratio of the financial sector's revenue contribution to the economy in relation to the non-financial sector. The Autoregressive Distributive-Lag (ARDL) model is used to examine the long-run and short-run associations between financialisation and the key development indicators. The study finds evidence in support of the occurrence of financialisation in South Africa post 1994. The results of the statistical analysis reveal that for the generally accepted proxies for financialisation, financialisation has a positive effect on unemployment reduction and economic growth, no effect on inequality reduction and investment, while the evidence with regards to innovation is mixed. The additional results from the Krippner financialisation ratios indicate that financialisation has a positive effect on inequality reduction and economic growth, a negative effect on innovation and investment, while no effect on unemployment reduction. The findings of this study contradict theoretical expectations, as they point to some positive effects of financialisation on the South African economy although there are also some negative effects. In light of this, policy recommendations are provided so as to enhance these positive effects while also safeguarding against further negative effects.

This research investigates the relationship between the crises of care and finance, and efforts to ensure that care is valued more highly. It explores why investment funds have acquired care homes, how they realise value, and the implications for workers and residents. It also examines the factors that have limited financialisation, including the activities of social and labour movements. These developments are studied through empirical case studies of three major UK care companies, and analysis of the strategies of selected movements in the UK and US. The research involved 64 interviews, observation and document analysis. A geographical perspective helps to illuminate uneven investment in real estate, the quality of the care homes produced, and the spatial dimensions of organising within globalised care systems. The research finds that financial ownership of care companies has been driven by their real estate assets, the availability of debt financing, and specific business models. Corporate debt has also enabled governments to displace and depoliticise responsibility for funding care. However, finance has not replaced labour as a source of value: care remains labour intensive and value can be extracted from low-status, poorly organised workers and clients. The thesis deploys feminist care ethics to analyse the effects of financial ownership and crisis on labour and residents, including evictions that result from care home closures and the production of new, 'hotel-like' facilities. Financialisation has, though, been limited by a lack of material resources in care and political opposition. In contesting financialised care, movements have used stories to locate economic agency; to address political, experiential and affective divides; and to promote alternative social relations of interdependence. Organising is crucial to creating space for such stories. Overall, financialisation has been enabled by the undervaluing of care, but it has also been limited by social values and relationships associated with care.

The relationship between finance and the real economy which has been the subject of centuries old debates, gained renewed prominence with the relative and unprecedented growth of the financial sector over the last few decades. Finance has changed not only in terms of its size compared to other sectors, but also in terms of the nature of its products, and how it affects outcomes in the real economy. This has become known as financialisation. Research in other places has shown that the financial sector has grown at the expense of the real economy, as it has negatively impacted real investment. This occurred against the backdrop of non-financial corporations (NFCs) diverting more of their surpluses to the financial sector in the form of financial payout and financial investment. This research project studies the relationship between financialisation and the real economy in South Africa. Using aggregated data of all listed firms (with the exception of financial companies) on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange between 1971 and 2012 the impact of financialisation on real investment is empirically tested. Two channels in the form of financial payout (dividend and interest payments) and financial income (dividend and interest income) through which funds flow between the real economy and finance are analysed. We find that increased financial activity by NFCs may have a negative impact on real capital investment. Financial income presents more robust results than financial payout which may be an indication that the crowding out effect is a serious problem in South Africa.

This thesis focuses on one instance of housing financialisation, mortgagedebt and political subjectivation through considering the mortgaging anddemortgaging of life in the Barcelona metropolitan region from 1997 to 2014.My original contributions to knowledge are illustrating how the financialisationof housing equates to the financialisation of life; operationalising a biopoliticalreading of mortgaged homeownership and showing how politicalsubjectivation is not an act or event but an accumulation of learned practices‘from below’. A heterodox, Marxist-inspired political economic perspectiveand ethnographic engagement with (formerly) mortgaged homeowners in thehousing rights movement the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) inthe Barcelona metropolitan region are used to explore the mortgaging anddemortgaging of life. To consider the former, I connect the political economicprocesses driving the financialisation of housing during Spain’s 1997-2007housing boom to the lived experience of people unable to pay theirmortgage, facing foreclosure and eviction, in the Barcelona metropolitanregion. In other words, I weave together the macro processes and microrealities underlying the mortgaging of life. To understand the demortgaging oflife, I consider the processes of political subjectivation of mortgage-affectedpeople through their collective struggles with the PAH to get their mortgagedebt forgiven, to block evictions and to occupy empty bank-owned housing,among others. The thesis sheds light onto how life becomes a keycomponent of (urban) capital accumulation strategies, and thus thedevelopment of urban futures, and how financialised and biopoliticaltechnologies of power related to (mortgage) debt can be disrupted.

Over the past decade banks repeatedly made headlines with severe cases of business misconduct. Several high profile political inquiries sought to ascertain responsibility for the malfeasance but concluded that responsibility could not unequivocally be attributed. Considering that the responsibility principle constitutes a normative element which should guide social interaction, its evasion can lead to social distortions. The purpose of the thesis is threefold. First, it seeks to explore the responsibility practices in banking; second, it considers the mechanisms of responsibility evasion; and third, it discusses the power relations guiding responsible business conduct. Academic research typically considers corporate responsibility from two perspectives. At the meso level responsibility is framed in terms of corporate governance; at the micro level individual and team responsibilities are studied. This thesis offers a different perspective and discusses responsibility in terms of practice, which comprises responsibility constitution and responsibility attribution. In an organisational context responsibility is arranged in terms of role and task responsibilities and corporate culture, while responsibility attributions refer to the interpretations and judgements of social conduct. The analysis draws on the concept of 'agencement' which describes a heterogeneous compendium of different devices that act on and modify each other (Pollock and Williams, 2009). Ontologically, ANT views realities as multiple and fluid and the question of which reality takes precedence is a matter of power relations. For the analysis a methodological tool, the responsibility map, has been developed and applied to three case studies, namely the mis-selling of PPI, trader manipulation of LIBOR and low-balling of LIBOR. Operating under the principles of financialisation, banks have internalised financial benefits while negative outcomes were externalised. Responsibility attribution for the misconduct was systematically evaded. The mechanisms of responsibility diffusion are closely tied to the business strategies: retail banks proceduralised responsibility; it became invested in meeting sales targets. Investment banks operated at the forefront of LIBOR manipulations. Handling the LIBOR rate setting process in an informal manner created responsibility gaps. In both environments the regulatory regimes in place proved ineffective. It is argued that corporate irresponsibility must be considered as a recurrent theme if banking remains organised in terms of financialised business models. The thesis presents a novel approach to the study of organisational responsibility. The methodological tool developed for this research can be adapted to study responsibility in other corporate contexts. Given that the current business models are flawed as they create an environment that condones irresponsible conduct the thesis concludes with suggestions for policy making.

This thesis examines the influence of institutional investors in the activities of large, publicly traded gold mining companies. As key sources of financing and dominant shareholders in company stocks, institutional investors have pushed for the maximisation of shareholder value as company goal. I examine the financial and operational realignments implemented by firms and their implications for production, growth and geography in the commodity boom and bust cycle of 2003-2015. I argue that the bid to deliver shareholder value manifested in highly fragmented, but interlinked, sites of accumulation: sharp swings in stocks and dividend payments that diverged from their actual basis in production, alongside increasing claims to future profitability through spatial restructuring. I theorise the process as contradictory-laden and crisis-prone as mineral extraction came to be mediated by the yield requirements, investment motives and risk tolerance of institutional investors. The thesis contributes to key debates on financialisation and mineral extraction within geography, political ecology and the financialisation literature.

Orientador: Antonio Carlos Macedo e Silva / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-20T06:03:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Nascimento_PauloFranciscodo_M.pdf: 1375419 bytes, checksum: ba7fc3d028483498b980c3fbe5500edc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: Embora a maior parte dos trabalhos acadêmicos a respeito da financeirização seja de caráter descritivo ou empírico, na última década surgiram tentativas de inserir os aspectos da financeirização em modelos macroeconômicos formais. Diante de insuficiências das análises formais anteriores, alguns autores utilizaram-se da abordagem chamada stock-flow consistent na concepção de modelos macroeconômicos a respeito da financeirização. Este trabalho é dedicado a analisar o esforço realizado para incorporar a financeirização em modelos macroeconômicos formais utilizando a abordagem stock-flow consistent, buscando avaliar em que medida a abordagem é capaz de representar formalmente a financeirização da maneira como é concebida pela literatura descritiva e empírica e superar as deficiências que as demais tentativas de análise formal apresentam / Abstract: Although the majority of the academic works on financialization are descriptive or empirical, in the last decade there have been attempts to represent its features in formal macroeconomic models. In face of the deficiencies of previous analyses, some authors used the stock-flow consistent approach to elaborate formal macroeconomic models on financialisation. This work is dedicated to analyze the effort employed to incorporate financialisation in macroeconomic models using the stock-flow consistent approach, focusing in evaluating the degree in which the referred approach is able to formally represent financialization in the way it is conceived by descriptive and empirical literature and surpass the deficiencies present in the previous attempts of formal analyses / Mestrado / Ciências Economicas / Mestre em Ciências Econômicas

Três eixos de discussão são propostos neste trabalho. O primeiro é o de que, especialmente a partir dos anos 1970-1980, dado o ganho de hegemonia da estratégia neoliberal de desenvolvimento, o capitalismo teria ingressado numa nova fase. Entre todas as teorias desenvolvidas a fim de defender esta proposta, destacam-se aquelas que dão especial atenção ao aspecto financeiro das transformações recentes na dinâmica capitalista, enfatizando a importância histórica assumida pela valorização fictícia do capital neste período. Daí emerge o segundo eixo, com a compreensão de que tal desenvolvimento do sistema capitalista - no sentido de processualidade e não de avanço - leva a uma redefinição/ampliação daqueles que seriam os traços essenciais do imperialismo contemporâneo, constituindo-se, por isso, uma nova fase do imperialismo. Neste sentido, estaríamos ainda sob as bases de um imperialismo capitalista, embora o \"imperialismo contemporâneo\" deva ser entendido como uma complexificação do \"imperialismo clássico\". Dito isto, insurge o terceiro eixo de discussão: entendendo a teoria da dependência como um complemento necessário às teses do imperialismo, se temos uma nova fase do capitalismo e uma nova fase do imperialismo, temos também, necessariamente, uma nova fase da dependência. A presente proposta de pesquisa tem como objeto, portanto, uma tentativa de perceber como a dependência, assumida na perspectiva da teoria marxista da dependência, se estabelece nos marcos dessa nova fase ou no interior da lógica de valorização capitalista atual. / Three axes of discussion are proposed in this paper. The first is that, especially from the years 1970-1980, considering the gain of hegemony of the neoliberal strategy of development, capitalism is undergoing substantial changes in its form of organization and operation and, therefore, would have entered in a new phase. Among all the theories developed in order to defend this proposal, we highlight those that give special attention to the financial aspect of the recent transformations in capitalist dynamics, emphasizing the historical importance assumed by fictitious valuation of capital in this period. Thus emerges the second axis, with the understanding that such development of the capitalist system - in the sense of process, not improvement - leads to a redefinition/expansion of those that would be the essential features of contemporary imperialism, constituting therefore a new phase of imperialism. In this sense, we are still under the foundations of a capitalist imperialism, even though the \"contemporary imperialism\" should be understood as a complexification of \"classical imperialism\". That said it arises the third point: understanding the Dependency Theory as a necessary complement to the theories of imperialism, if we have a new phase of capitalism and a new phase of imperialism, it seems fair to say that we have also, necessarily, a new phase of dependence. The proposed research aims, therefore, an attempt to understand how the dependence, assumed by the standpoint of Marxist Dependence Theory, is established within the framework of this new phase or within the current capitalist logic of valorization.

This thesis provides a historical materialist policy analysis of the diversity of capital-account policies (CAPs) deployed in Brazil and South Africa over the period 2008-2014. Facing relatively similar patterns of cross-border money-capital movements and comparable financial challenges, these two emerging capitalist countries implemented radically different CAPs: while Brazil deployed a remarkable array of measures (capital controls on inflows, foreign exchange interventions, regulations of derivatives contracts, etc.), the policy response in South Africa was much more orthodox, and mainly characterised by the further liberalisation of outflows. The historical materialist policy analysis combines a variety of theoretical literatures (including historical materialism, financial and economic geography, and post-Keynesian economics) and research methods (qualitative research interviews, policy document analysis, and macroeconomic analysis). It examines the drivers of the CAP policy-making process in Brazil and South Africa in the light of (1) the social constitution and the class character of the capitalist state and money-capital, conceived of as particular 'moments' in the totality of capitalist social relations from which they are constituted; (2) the historical-geographical specificity of the Brazilian and South African capitalist development trajectory, (3) the unfolding of the broader social struggles of the working class, and (4) with specific reference to the highly uneven geographies of the contemporary global financial system. I claim that in both countries, post-crisis CAPs were not part of a political attempt at restructuring the state and altering class relations. By contrast, CAPs were instrumental in reproducing particular modes of managing class relations and accumulation in a changing international context, though in a precarious and temporary manner. Post-crisis CAPs involved the creation, enhancement, and adaptation of financial and monetary regulatory capacity (involving both drastic innovation and more subtle forms of change) to deepen the CAPs deployed in the previous decade, while coping with their (perceived) worst consequences: sustaining the historically-specific mode of mediating the global movement of money-capital in each country required the uneven re-articulation of state power. The thesis contributes to the literatures on the distinctively Marxian-inspired approaches to development, the uneven geographies of finance/financialisation, materialist state theory, and to the debates about more progressive forms of financial governance in emerging capitalist countries. It also shows the limits of the concept of 'policy space' as an analytical device, chiefly due to its almost complete blindness to class and to the active role of the working class in shaping policies. This results in difficulties in envisaging progressive policy alternatives, that is, policies that do not only aim at stabilising capital accumulation and facilitating the reproduction of key capitalist social forms in the short term.

This dissertation analyses the restructuring of the state and financialisation in Turkey in the post-1980 period with specific emphasis on public debt management. Turkey provides a model case of state pioneering financial deepening and intervening into the market for the socialisation of the losses of the financial sector. The dissertation argues that despite the increasing public debt ratio through 1980s and 1990s, the aim of financial deepening was persistent. The state contributed to the financialisation in the 1990s through the dominance of public securities with high yields in the market. The Treasury was a nodal point not only in the restructuring of the banking sector in the aftermath of 2001 crisis but also the insulation of economic management from political intervention. Its success is tightly related to financial markets and its restructuring presents a case of identification of public interest with the interest of financial sector. The literature on financialisation should be extended to cover the neoliberal transformation in countries labelled as &ldquo / emerging markets&rdquo / . The restructuring of the state in neoliberal era can be defined as financialisation of the state from a broader perspective. It contributed to financialisation by making the state rely on financial markets in an increasing number of policy fields.