Daniele Tori

The Effects of Financialisation and Financial Development on Investment: Evidence from Firm-Level Data in Europe

In this paper we estimate the effects of financialization on physical investment in selected western European countries using panel data based on the balance-sheets of publicly listed non-financial companies (NFCs) supplied by Worldscope for the period 1995-2015. We find robust evidence of an adverse effect of both financial payments (interests and dividends) and financial incomes on investment in fixed assets by the NFCs. This finding is robust for both the pool of all Western European firms and single country estimations. The negative impacts of financial incomes are non-linear with respect to the companies’ size: financial incomes crowd-out investment in large companies, and have a positive effect on the investment of only small, relatively more credit-constrained companies. Moreover, we find that a higher degree of financial development is associated with a stronger negative effect of financial incomes on companies’ investment. This finding challenges the common wisdom on ‘finance-growth nexus’. Our findings support the ‘financialization thesis’ that the increasing orientation of the non-financial sector towards financial activities is ultimately leading to lower physical investment, hence to stagnant or fragile growth, as well as long term stagnation in productivity.

Financial–Real-Side Interactions in an Extended Monetary Circuit with Shadow Banking: Loving or Dangerous Hugs?

Abstract: Monetary circuit (MC) theory is one of the most interesting attempts to formally describe the functioning of a monetary production economy as centered on the concept of the flux–reflux of money. Endogenous money creation by commercial banks allows the circuit to open and firms to implement production processes. Financial markets “passively” close the circuit by intermediating savings via bond and equity issuance. Despite its natural focus on financial-real side links, the monetary circuit literature has paid relatively little attention to “financialization” and the way it has modified real-financial dynamics. In this article, we analyze whether the flux–reflux perspective of the circuit may be fruitfully applied to the description of the linkages between the real economy and finance in a financialized economy. We propose two interconnected circuits, one for the real economy and one for the financial one. In this context, finance can still ensure a consistent closure of the whole system, thus directly allowing the functioning of the real economy. Newly developed inside-finance interactions, however, may indirectly influence real world dynamics, by easing/restricting access to credit/financial markets, and give rise to boom-and-bust cycles. Our aim is twofold: modeling modern financial worlds within an MC framework and understanding how financialization could have changed real-financial interactions.

THE MACROECONOMICS OF SHADOW BANKING

In this paper, we propose a simple short-run post-Keynesian model in which the key aspects of shadow banking, namely securitization and the production of structured finance instruments, are explicitly formalized. At the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to broaden purely real-side post-Keynesian models and their traditional focus on shareholder-value orientation, the financialization of non-financial firms, and the profit-led vs wage-led dichotomy. We rather put emphasis on the role of financial institutions and rentier-friendly environment in determining the predominance of specific growth and distribution regimes. First, we illustrate the macroeconomic rationale of shadow banking practices. We show how, before the 2007-8 crisis, securitization and shadow banking allowed for an increase in profitability for the whole financial sector, while apparently keeping leverage under control. Second, we define a variety of shadow-banking-led regimes in terms of economic activity, productive capital accumulation, and income distribution. We show that both an ‘exhilarationist’ and a ‘stagnationist’ regime may prevail, nevertheless characterized by a probable increase in income inequality between rentiers and wage earners.

The theoretical and empirical fragilities of the expansionary austerity theory

ABSTRACT Criticism to expansionary austerity theory has extensively addressed the methodological problems affecting the econometric techniques that underpin it; however, few efforts have formally analyzed its theoretical strictures. In this article, the authors develop a more general and comprehensive critique, both from a theoretical and from an empirical perspective. They first present a short-run model that formally describes the theoretical background of specific policy measures advocated by expansionary austerity supporters. They show how these measures might only have expansionary outcomes under extreme and unrealistic conditions. The authors then move to the data and provide an econometric analysis of the key variables that leave the results of our theoretical model undetermined; their findings reinforce the validity of our theoretical critique. Since 2007, when an important opportunity to test expansionary austerity presented itself with the recession, the core mechanisms of expansionary austerity theory seem to not have been working, to say the least. In fact, austerity measures delivered perverse results precisely in the countries where they were expected to be most effective.

The Impacts of Rent Incomes on Capitalist Accumulation: Towards Coherence

Although there is no universally recognized definition in the existing literature, the ‘rentiers’ are usually identified as those subjects of an economic system that derive their income from any source different from wage and profit. Therefore, the rent is primarily described as a ‘passive income’ over a property for the use of which the owner can require payments without being directly involved in the entrepreneurial activity. From a contemporary perspective, these ‘properties’ may take the form of various assets such as equities, bonds, securities, monetary deposits and other financial instruments that generate an income from interest (or dividends). Belonging to different theories of income distribution, several authors have tried to integrate different shapes of this notion in their descriptions of the economic systems. Without neglecting a general discussion of the various paradigms to which the principal schools of thought refer to, in each section of this paper we will try to answer three main theoretical questions. First, what are the sources of rents and how are they explained? Second, who are the beneficiaries of this type of income and how they behave within the socioeconomic system? Thirdly, to what extent and in which ways various forms of rent affect the accumulation processes? The aim of this paper is to provide the analysis of the theoretical evolution from the ‘agricultural rent’ to a ‘monetary rent’, and finally to the description of a ‘financial rent’ in the current phase of capitalist development.