Suchergebnisse

Milton Friedman hung up the phone in disgruntlement. The most influential economist of the postwar era had just called three different banks, one in Chicago and then two in New York, in order to initiate a financial transaction. He wanted to sell short $300,000 in pound sterling. Short selling is a technique for speculating on falling prices. Initially, speculators can only speculate on rising prices: they buy something and hope that it gains value, so that they can sell it at a profit. If the price for this asset goes down instead, the speculator incurs a loss when he resells it. So in order to profit from falling prices, speculators need to sell first and buy later – which is indeed possible if what is sold now is in fact only to be delivered a few weeks later. If the speculator is right and prices fall in the interim, he can buy cheap just before delivery is due and thus profit from having already sold what, at the time, he had not yet owned.

This cumulative dissertation deals with different aspects of the political economy of financialization processes, which have been largely neglected by political science so far. It first considers the centrality of sovereign debt for financialization and analyses corresponding changes in public debt management across OECD countries under the umbrella of an increasing alignment along global financial markets. Secondly, the dissertation uncovers a trend of a common, but geographically unevenly spread trend of financialization throughout European regions as a development marked by the fundamental role of private debt. Lastly, it aims at making a contribution to the growing literatur on changes in banking by bringing forward an argument about the financialization of German savings banks as monetary financial institutions that are normally regarded as risk-averse.

"Der Beitrag diskutiert die aktuelle und zukünftige Bedeutung lokal verankerter Aushandlungs- und Machtpositionen von Arbeitnehmervertretungen in großen Industrieunternehmen, die sich transnational neu ausrichten. Im Kontext der spezifisch deutschen industriellen Beziehungen werden die im Zuge der organisatorischen Restrukturierung und Globalisierung sich verändernden Aushandlungskonstellationen herausgearbeitet und die Verankerungen und Gefährdungen von Primärmachtpositionen der Arbeitnehmervertretungen analysiert. Untersucht werden Restrukturierungsfälle in der Chemie- und Pharma- sowie in der Automobilindustrie. Der Beitrag arbeitet die Spielräume der Ausgestaltung und Gewichtung lokaler Aushandlungspositionen heraus, die diese im Verlauf strategischer Wahlentscheidungen des Managements erlangen aber auch verlieren können. Abschließend wird angesichts eines wachsenden Gewichtes globaler Finanzmarktrationalität für strategische Orientierungen eine Tendenz zur Instabilvisierung von Aushandlungsbeziehungen diskutiert." (Autorenreferat)

This project investigates why people in Chile acquired so much consumer debt in contexts of material prosperity, and asks what the role of inequality and commodification is in this process. The case raises an important challenge to the literature. Insofar as existing accounts assume that the financialization of consumption occurs in contexts marked by wage stagnation and a general deterioration of the middle classes, they engender two contradictory explanations: while political economists argue that people use credit in order to smooth their consumption in the face of market volatility, economists maintain that concentration of wealth at the top pushes middle income consumers to emulate the expenditures of the rich and consume beyond their means. These explanations do not necessarily fit the reality of developing countries. Triangulating in-depth interviews with middle class families, multivariate statistical analysis and secondary literature, the project shows that consumers in Chile use credit to finance "ordinary" forms of consumption that do not aim either at coping with market instability or emulating and signaling status to others. Rather, Chileans use department store credit cards in order to acquire a standard package of "inconspicuous" goods that they feel entitled to have. From this point of view, the systematic indebtedness of consumers originates in a major concern with "rank", "achievement" and "security" that – following De Botton -- I call "status anxiety". Status anxiety does not stem from the desire to emulate rich consumers, but from the impossibility of complying with normative expectations about what a middle class family should be (and have) that outweigh wage improvements. The project thus investigates the way in which "status anxiety" is systematically reproduced by means of two broad mechanisms that prompt people to acquire consumer debt. The first mechanism generating debt stems from an increase of real wages and high levels of inequality. It is explained by a general sociological principle known as relative deprivation, which points to the fact that general satisfaction with one´s income, possessions or status, is assessed not in absolute terms such as total income, but in relation with reference groups. In this sense, I explore the mechanisms that operate as catalyzers of relative deprivation, by making explicit social inequalities and distorting the perception of others´ wealth. Despite upward mobility and economic improvement, Chileans share the perception of "falling behind," which materializes in an "imaginary middle class" against which people compare their status, possessions and economic independence. Finally, I show that the commodification of education, health and pension funds does not directly prompt people to acquire consumer debt, but operate as "income draining" mechanisms that demand higher shares of middle class families' "discretionary income." In combination with "relative deprivation," these "income draining" mechanisms leave families with few options to perform their desired class identities, other than learning how to bring resources from the future into the present with the help of department store credit cards.

Das Recht auf Wohnen ist elementar. Es wurde nicht nur in der Weimarer Verfassung von 1919 formuliert, es schlägt sich seitdem ebenso in nationalen und internationalen Verfassungen und Chartas nieder. Wie in anderen Ländern auch, wird Wohnen in Deutschland jedoch zunehmend zum Luxus und mutiert zu einem immer komplexeren Wirtschaftsgut. Wachsende Wohnungsnot und steigende Mieten bestimmen trotz politischer Gegenmaßnahmen – zum Beispiel der Mietpreisbremse – noch immer das Geschehen in vielen deutschen Städten und verschärfen so die soziale Lage vor allem für Geringverdienende.

»Finanzmarktkapitalismus« fungiert als Chiffre für tief greifende Veränderungen in Wirtschaft, Unternehmen und Arbeitswelt. Mit dem Fokus auf Wachstum und Innovation werden in diesem Buch kontroverse theoretische Positionen und empirische Befunde in Bezug gesetzt, um die Debatte über das Zusammenspiel von Finanzmärkten, Finanzmarktakteuren, Unternehmen und Arbeitswelt voranzubringen.

"Discourses around financial education and literacy in Germany are examined and contextualized within recent theories of financialization as a social process. Recent campaigns for financial education can be understood as aiming at the establishment of a 'Finanzbildungsbürgertum' (financially educated middle class). This concept can contribute to an understanding of financialization as a process that comprises social differentiation and appeals to aspirations of social distinction." (author's abstract)

The article explains the emergence & the consequences of the crisis by drawing on established theories of International Political Economy. It uses the "Financialization" -- concept for an inter-temporal study & the "Comparative Capitalism" research program for an inter-national perspective. In an inter-temporal perspective, the contribution demonstrates that both the emergence & the extent of the crisis are impossible to understand without taking due notice of the fundamental processes of company & household financialization during the last three decades. Financialization is defined as a process whereby the share of the financial sector within profits & household income permanently increases, to the detriment of the share of the production sector. In an inter-national perspective, the article explains the more severe repercussions of the crisis within Anglo-Saxon economies by pointing towards the more important role of financial markets within these liberal economies, whereas the classical "Hausbanken" within coordinated economies have been more moderately affected. Adapted from the source document.

"While the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach is strong on pointing out the complementarities among national modes of accumulation, it falls short on capturing the dynamics of finance. From a regulationist perspective, its simple dichotomy of bank based versus market based finance overlooks functional equivalences and thus overemphasizes differences. The market based systems are misrepresented; in reality they do not conform to the ideals of transparency and dispersed shareholding. According to VoC, financialization emanates from the liberal market economies. However, the export successes of the coordinated market economies brought about financialization in the market systems by eliminating some of their industries. Most importantly, the VoC focus on firms treats finance as a service to companies and not as a profit driven sector on its own." (author's abstract)

"The paper deals with fiancialization in the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry, focused on Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF. Important restructuring in each of these companies is justified by financial markets' requirements. However, that restructuring has not been enforced by institutional investors or financial markets, it was driven by dominant management coalitions referring to financial rationality. Therefore the outcome of financialization of rather similar companies has been extremely heterogeneous. The most important general outcome was the end of the technology based integrated chemical and pharmaceutical company as a paradigm for the core of the industry. An important social outcome was the increased heterogenity and differentiation of wage and labor conditions where homogeneous standards based on one overall collective agreement used to be in force, with only upward variation by companies. As decisions on what financialization may be in big companies are a matter of strategic choice, workers and labor representatives may be able to influence respective strategies, depending on their ability and preparedness to draw on power resources in collaboration." (author's abstract)

Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Verschiebung von Finanzialisierungsprozessen unter dem Vorzeichen von klima- und entwicklungspolitischen Agenden auf das Terrain der Stadt. Mit der Fokussierung von Finanzmärkten auf ökologisch nachhaltige Projekte sowie deren Involvierung in entwicklungspolitische Handlungsstrategien hat sich das Engagement von Finanzmärkten nicht nur sektoral, sondern auch geographisch verbreitet und vertieft. Die globale Governance von Klima- und Entwicklungspolitik zielt verstärkt auf Städte in sogenannten "emerging markets". Die damit einhergehenden organisatorischen, diskursiven und regulativen Verschiebungen werden in kritischen Teilen der Wirtschaftsgeographie (Bracking 2015a; Ouma/Johnson/Bigger 2018), der Entwicklungsforschung (Mader 2017; Mawdsley 2018) und der Nachhaltigkeitsforschung (Asiyanbi 2017) randständig auch ihrer städtischen Dimension diskutiert. Die neue Bedeutung der Stadt als Akteur, Objekt und Ort von klima- und entwicklungspolitischen Interventionen, die auf Vertiefung und Ausweitung von Kapitalflüssen aufbauen, ist jedoch in gegenwärtigen stadtpolitischen und Stadtforschungsdebatten noch nicht ausreichend erfasst. Ziel unseres Beitrags ist es, die beschriebenen Entwicklungen nachzuzeichnen und ihre Wirkung im Kontext finanzialisierter Stadtentwicklungsdynamiken herauszuarbeiten. Theoretisch nehmen wir Bezug auf Ansätze der politischen Ökonomie und politischen Ökologie, um zu beleuchten, inwiefern die Verknüpfung von klima- und entwicklungspolitischen Agenden auf dem Terrain der Stadt Prozesse der Reregulierung, Disziplinierung und Entpolitisierung befördert. Abschließend leiten wir daraus eine Agenda für zukünftige Forschung ab. ; This paper examines how shifts in climate and development finance and related global action agendas become manifest at the urban scale. In recent years, the increasing focus of financial markets on environmentally sustainable projects has gone hand in hand with their heightened engagement in global development strategies. These entangled shifts have widened the scope of financial market activity, in terms of economic sectors but also geographically, particularly as global climate and development policies are increasingly targeting cities in so called "emerging markets". Parts of economic geography (Bracking 2015a; Ouma/Johnson/Bigger 2018), development studies (Mader 2017; Mawdsley 2018), and environmental studies (Asiyanbi 2017; Bigger 2018) have critically discussed the related organizational, discursive, and regulatory shifts. Yet these literatures have only paid marginal attention to their urban dimension. Concomitantly, urban research has not sufficiently reflected the new relevance of Southern cities as actors, objects, and sites of intervention for climate and development agendas, which build on the deepening and expansion of global capital flows. Our aim in this paper is to trace relevant dynamics in climate and development finance and to analyse their effects on cities and urban development. Theoretically, this paper builds on political economy and political ecology perspectives to show how the increasing entanglement of climate and development finance on the terrain of the city advances processes of reregulation, disciplining, and depoliticisation. Our conclusion proposes an agenda for future research.

Der Kommentar zum Abschlusskapitel von Forrest, Koh und Wissink "Cities and the Super-Rich" diskutiert den Unterschied zwischen direkten und indirekten Investitionen und betont die asymmetrische Position zwischen Privathaushalten, professionalisierten Akteuren und Finanzinstitutionen in Finanzgeschäften. Folglich plädiert die Autorin dafür, die Mechanismen zur Vermögenskonzentration der Superreichen nicht als 'Parasitär' zu bezeichnen, sondern als die – einem finanzorientierten Akkumulationssystem immanente – Umverteilung von unten nach oben zu konzeptualisieren. ; The comment to the final chapter in Forrest, Koh and Wissink "Cities and the Super-Rich" discusses the difference between direct and portfolio investments, and emphasizes the asymmetry between private households and professional as well as finance institutions in their finance activities. Accordingly, the author argues that the mechanisms of wealth concentration by the super-rich should not be described as "parasitic", but conceptualized as a bottom-up form of redistribution that is immanent to a finance-oriented accumulation system.