Housing debts have become fuel for the global economy, having been turned into tradable commodities on the financial markets. However, housing debts also have a profound relevance in the everyday life of those who have become indebted, enabling the dream of homeownership, but also leading to foreclosures and evictions. This thesis aims to take a rather under-researched perspective on formal and informal housing debts (i.e., mortgages and familial loans) by exploring the role of public and domestic discourses in, what is termed, the financialisation of housing. The financialisation of housing refers to the process of real estate being turned into assets and commodities and to the spread of individualised financial products being used to secure housing. The thesis uses the Czech Republic as a case through which to examine how discourse may enable this transition and how contribute to a specific financial governmentality. The thesis raises questions: How is it possible that mortgages come to be perceived as a normal and natural solution to housing issues? How do they become part of the debtors' lives through certain discourses? These questions are explored through an innovative framework of layered performativity, encompassing rhetoric, sociotechnical devices, and references to practices that reveal three main...

The purpose of this study is to develop an indebtedness framework that explains the effects of financialisation and household indebtedness on economic development. For this purpose, the study empirically examines annual South African data covering the years 1990-2017 to look at the effect of financialisation before and after the 2007/08 financial crisis. South Africa adopted an inflation targeting monetary policy regime in the 1990s before the global economic crisis in response to the global financial crisis of 2007-08. Examining data from 1990-2017 made it possible to look at the effects of financial deregulation policies that were introduced post the 2007-08 financial meltdown. The study addressed three objectives. The first objective sought to establish the extent of financialisation in the South African economy pre and post the 2008 financial crisis. To achieve this objective, annual time series data from 1990-2017 on financialisation variables was split into two, before and after the financial crisis. Graphical presentations of the four financialisation variables (financial deregulation, foreign financial inflows, asset price volatility, and shift to market-based finance) showed that there was a difference in financialisation before and after the 2008 financial crisis. Analysis of variance showed that there is a statistically significant difference between the foreign financial inflows’ series before and after the financial meltdown of 2008 (t-test value -6.527, p ≤ 0.0001). (1990-2008). The findings also showed that there was no statistically significant difference between asset price volatility before and after the financial meltdown of 2008. Interestingly, there is a statistically significant difference between stock market value traded in the period from 1990-2008 and 20092017 after the financial crisis (t = -4.295, p ≤0.001). The second objective sought to examine the causal direction between financialisation and household indebtedness. Contrary to a priori expectations, the findings showed that financial deregulation, foreign financial inflows and shift to market-based finance do not Granger cause indebtedness. However, the findings showed that the null hypothesis that asset price does not Granger cause household indebtedness was rejected. This implies that there is a causal direction between asset price volatility and household indebtedness Lastly, the third objective of this study was to explain the effects of financialisation and indebtedness on economic development to inform the indebtedness framework that this study set out to develop. Using annual data for the period of 1990 to 2017, the third objective was addressed by examining the effect of household indebtedness and financialisation on economic development. These effects were tested using OLS regression and error correction modelling technique (ECM) for each of the four financialisation variable: (1) financial deregulation measured using the financial reform index; (2) foreign financial inflows measured using stock of foreign liabilities as percentage of GDP; (3) asset price volatility; and (4) shift to market-based finance, measured using stock market value traded as percentage of GDP. The findings showed that foreign financial inflows and asset price index when regressed with household indebtedness showed a statistically significant effect on economic development in a long-run model. The indebtedness framework was duly presented showing that economic development is likely to be negatively and strongly affected by financialisation as experienced in asset price volatility and foreign financial inflows. / Graduate School of Business Leadership / D.B.L.

Dans un contexte économique instable, résultant notamment de la mondialisation des échanges, de la financiarisationde l’économie et de l’accélération des mutations technologiques, caractérisé de surcroît par l’apathie endémique de lacroissance économique française, la prospérité et la survie des entreprises dépendent de leur capacité à s’adapter enpermanence aux évolutions du marché pour pouvoir sauvegarder leur compétitivité, assurer leur développement etfaire face à une concurrence toujours plus vive. Si les restructurations sont indispensables pour assurer la pérennité desentreprises dont dépendent le maintien de l’emploi, le dynamisme du marché du travail et la création de richesse, ellesmettent fréquemment en péril les intérêts des salariés. Nombre d’entre elles menacent ainsi leur emploi et partant leursécurité économique et matérielle, mais également leurs droits collectifs qu’il s’agisse des avantages issus de leurstatut collectif ou de leur droit à participer à la détermination de leurs conditions de travail et à la gestion del’entreprise via leurs représentants, dont le mandat peut être affecté par une restructuration. Si ces opérations mettenten péril les intérêts des salariés et génèrent un coût social largement assumé par la collectivité nationale, le droit, enparticulier le droit social, ne peut remettre en cause les projets de restructuration. Ces décisions et leur mise en oeuvrerelèvent en effet de la liberté d’entreprendre des dirigeants de l’entreprise à laquelle le droit social ne saurait porteratteinte en s’immisçant dans leurs choix économiques et stratégiques. L’objet de cette étude est donc d’exposercomment, en dépit de son incapacité à influer sur les décisions de restructurations, le droit social tente d’en limiter lecoût social, en préservant au mieux les intérêts des salariés. / In an unsettled economic climate, the result in particular of globalisation of trade, the financialisation of the economyand accelerating technological change, further marked by the endemic apathy of French economic growth, theprosperity and survival of companies depend on their capacity to adapt constantly to market trends in order tosafeguard their competitiveness, to ensure their development and to stand up to ever increasingly harsh competition.Whilst restructuring is essential to ensure the long-term survival of companies, on which maintaining jobs, a dynamiclabour market and the creation of wealth all depend, it frequently endangers the interests of employees. Manyrestructuring operations thus threaten their employment and consequently their economic and material security, butalso their collective rights when it comes to advantages resulting from their collective status or their right to participatein determining their working conditions and in the management of the company through their representatives, whosemandate may be impacted by a restructuring operation. While such operations endanger the interests of employees andgenerate a social cost borne to a large extent by the national community, law, and in particular social law, cannotchallenge restructuring projects. Such decisions and their implementation fall within the purview of the freedom to actenjoyed by corporate managers that social law cannot in any way impede by interfering in their economic and strategicchoices. The purpose of this study is therefore to show how social law, despite its inability to influence restructuringdecisions, seeks to limit the social cost by preserving as best as possible the interests of employees.