Figure 16 - uploaded by Cédric Durand
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
During recent decades, the link between profits and domestic investment has weakened in the largest high-income economies. In this article, we explore this attenuation of the profit–investment nexus through a profit-centred perspective. Focusing on the impact of the origins and uses of profits, we study the investment behaviour of non-financial cor...
Similar publications
With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization rate, the domestic water consumption in China shows a rapid increasing trend. This paper summarizes the relationship between per capita domestic water consumption, urbanization rate and per capita GDP by studying the domestic water consumption laws of typical countries in the world. T...
Citations
... Faced with the same growing disconnection between book value and market capitalization, such accounts anchor the split more concretely in existing, non-reproducible and therefore rent-generating assets -which, in some cases, may not be properly reflected in the balance sheet as they don't have a market value-rather than market expectations. The pivotal role of intangibles in rent generation might to another long standing puzzle which has been central to the financialization literature -the decline of profitinvestment nexus (Stockhammer 2005, Lapavitsas 2013, Durand and Gueuder 2018, Orhangazi 2018, Durand and Milberg 2020, Auvray et al. 2021, Rabinovich 2021. The puzzle here relates to firms' ability to remain profitable -and competitive -even as weaker investment diminishes their capacity to supply goods and services. ...
Corporate financialization (CF) comprises a major subfield of financialization studies centered on the belief that significant changes in corporate governance and business models have been driven by financial imperatives, profoundly impacting investment habits, labor policies, organizational practices, and the distribution of revenues. Experiencing explosive growth in recent years, the field has become mired in conceptual ambiguity, mirroring problems with financialization studies as a whole. While seeking to restore some conceptual clarity and clearly delineate the boundaries of the concept, this paper attempts a comprehensive review of empirical work on CF. At the core of the field we identify four sub-fields, each addressing distinct aspects of the way business models have become financialized under the influence of shareholder value principles. Our dissection of the literature shows, however, that these theories mostly remain under substantiated. The connection of financialization strategies to key outcomes of interest, like declining investment and rising inequality, remains nebulous in most cases. Beyond this, we identify key weaknesses in the way shareholder value orientation-the causal lynch pin of CF accounts-has been theorized. The field as a whole has paid insufficient attention to the variegated and uneven nature of the shareholder revolution, which has prevented a single uniform set of governance principles from diffusing. The critique concludes with a call for caution and nuance in employing the corporate financialization framework, emphasizing its role as just one part of a multifaceted transformation within capitalism. Alongside it, other pivotal structural forces, such as intangibilization, monopolization, and globalization, demand equal attention. The overarching aim of this review is to urge greater clarity, conceptual discipline, and a holistic perspective in future investigations into the dynamics of financialized capitalism.
... Firms accrue their profit through short-term strategic steps like downsizing and offshoring (Milberg, 2008) and an aggressive strategy of mergers and acquisitions (Erturk, 2020). Accordingly, profit becomes increasingly decoupled from accumulation (Durand and Gueuder, 2018). Relatedly, the increased shareholder value orientation in corporate behavior implies a shift from retaining and reinvesting profits to distributing it to shareholders (Lazonick and O'Sullivan, 2000;Lazonick et al., 2013;Lazonick, 2014). ...
Recent trends in corporate venture capital (CVC) activities have added to the size and complexity of the financial system. Intuition suggests that in a period marked by spectacularly increasing start-up valuations, the opportunity to earn large capital gains increases the importance of corporate investors’ financial motivations. Drawing on interviews with 12 Silicon Valley-based CVC units of global industrial companies, we examine if new trends in CVC investment represent a diversion from incumbents’ traditional focus on improving the competitive advantage of their core businesses. Building on the theory of the financialization of non-financial companies, we investigate the relationship between the strategic and financial motivations of CVC investing. We extend theory by distinguishing between developments at the extensive and intensive margins. We argue that the commonly applied quantitative measures capture financialization only at the extensive margin. Qualitative data indicate that the hypothesis of financialization does not hold at the intensive margin.
... This regime of accumulation should be seen as an outcome of the rise of financialization, proliferation of intangible capital facilitated by IPRs, and the disintegration of production through global value chains. What we term digital monopolies is but one layer of this regime of accumulation (Durand & Gueuder, 2018;Montalban et al, 2019). We will sharpen the focus on the operational modes of tech giants sitting at its centre in the following chapters. ...
As outrage over the socially damaging practices of technology companies intensifies, this book asks what it actually means to hold a 'monopoly' in the tech world and offers an in-depth analysis of how these corporate giants are produced, financialized, and regulated.
... Between 1990 and 2010, gross fixed capital formation in the high-income countries declined from about 23 percent to 20 percent of GDP, but foreign direct investment out of those countries rose dramatically-from about 10 percent to 30 percent of GDP in the United States and Germany, and from 20 percent to 60 percent of GDP in Britain and France. 73 The concomitant of global value chains has been a large increase in the offshoring of jobs, which compounds the social effects of domestic outsourcing. It is difficult to estimate the total number of jobs offshored but indicative that, between 1990 and 2008, the United States added 26.7 million jobs in non-tradeable sectors but only 600,000 new jobs in industries producing tradeable goods and services. ...
Although it has a durable institutional shape, the operation of capitalism takes different forms across space and time with varying distributive effects. This article contributes to a growing literature considering the successive forms taken by capitalism in the developed democracies since World War II. It develops a distinctive conception of these forms as “growth regimes” that are mutually constituted by the core practices of firms and reinforcing public policies specific to each historical era. The movement of firm practices and government policies is then examined with a view to identifying the growth regimes of three postwar eras of modernization, liberalization, and knowledge-based growth.
... At the level of global capitalism, although we live during the second phase of the ICT revolution (Brixner et al., 2020), the effects of innovation on economic growth seem curtailed. The monopolization of knowledge by and beyond IPRs blocks potentially profitable opportunities, fuelling weak global capital accumulation (Durand & Gueuder, 2018). In other words, under intellectual monopoly capitalism, innovation-driven growth and accumulation are being highjacked. ...
This article argues that contemporary leading global corporations are intellectual monopolies that base their power on the systematic concentration (and predation) of knowledge which they turn into intangible assets. By monopolizing access to portions of society’s knowledge, these companies’ capacity to plan portions of capitalism exceeds their legally owned assets. The article defines each intellectual monopoly’s sphere of planning as a corporate production and innovation system that may include several substructures, from global value chains to platforms. Inside corporate production and innovation systems, value and knowledge production are organized and controlled by the intellectual monopoly. Moreover, among intellectual monopolies, those centralizing big data and the machine learning algorithms required to process them will develop greater planning capacities and a further self-expansion of their intellectual monopoly. The emergence of intellectual monopolies has implications for every level within capitalism, including global capital accumulation, effects on labour and peripheries. By briefly referring to these dimensions, the article finishes by presenting a depiction of the geographies of digital capitalism as an era dominated by intellectual monopolies.
... Em primeiro lugar, porque suas características estão mais diretamente ligadas à expansão do novo valor criado em escala global ou à sua apropriação pelo processo de centralização. Em segundo lugar, porque seu movimento tem apresentado um comportamento oposto ao nível da acumulação doméstica nas economias avançadas (Durand;Gueuder, 2016). As evidências apresentadas nesta seção e na próxima apontam que esses fl uxos mantiveram uma relação estreita com a recuperação limitada da lucratividade, em especial quando se analisa a economia dos EUA. 3 Ou seja, o investimento estrangeiro direto apresentou-se, no período estudado, como uma saída importante para aquela parcela do capital que não encontrava oportunidades adequadas de valorização na esfera doméstica. ...
... Em primeiro lugar, porque suas características estão mais diretamente ligadas à expansão do novo valor criado em escala global ou à sua apropriação pelo processo de centralização. Em segundo lugar, porque seu movimento tem apresentado um comportamento oposto ao nível da acumulação doméstica nas economias avançadas (Durand;Gueuder, 2016). As evidências apresentadas nesta seção e na próxima apontam que esses fl uxos mantiveram uma relação estreita com a recuperação limitada da lucratividade, em especial quando se analisa a economia dos EUA. 3 Ou seja, o investimento estrangeiro direto apresentou-se, no período estudado, como uma saída importante para aquela parcela do capital que não encontrava oportunidades adequadas de valorização na esfera doméstica. ...
Este artigo explora a relação entre a dinâmica da lucratividade e o processo de exportação de capital, especialmente do capital-produtivo na forma de investimento estrangeiro direto. Essa tarefa é realizada em seus aspectos teóricos e empíricos. Retomam-se principalmente os estudos de Henryk Grossman, que, partindo de Marx, expõe o movimento de expansão internacional do capital como saída para o capital ocioso que se forma com a queda na taxa de lucro. Argumenta-se que apesar de a formação do mercado mundial estar contida na própria lógica do capital, sua manifestação mais recente esteve intimamente ligada aos problemas de lucratividade, em especial nos países de capitalismo avançado. Para esse movimento, a formação de capital ocioso é compreendida como elemento ainda mais fundamental do que os diferenciais internacionais de lucratividade. A análise empírica é realizada para os Estados Unidos, tanto pela maior disponibilidade de dados quanto pela sua posição na economia mundial.
... Similarly, Gutiérrez and Philippon (2017) reveal that investment in the United States remains weak relative to profitability and valuations since the early 2000s. Durand and Gueuder (2018) also note that the profitability-investment puzzle is a common problem for the largest high-income economies. In addition, the investment cash flow sensitivity for the US manufacturing companies declined between 1960 and 2006 (Brown, Fazzari, and Petersen, 2009). ...
1. Introduction
Financial markets are affected by various factors. While some of these factors have predictable rational features, some of them show themselves with
unpredictable irrational ones. The psychological situations of the investors can
be examined within the scope of irrational factors. In this context, mental disorders can be expected to affect people’s psychological states and thus their
behaviors. It is among the possible consequences that the prevalence of mental
disorders in societies has effects on the decision-making mechanisms as well
as the daily behaviors of individuals. It is considered as a part of this process
that mental disorders, which are expected to affect individuals’ decision-making behaviors, also have various effects on financial decisions. Exactly at this
point, the effects of mental disorders on financial markets aroused curiosity
and constituted the main motivation point of this study. In this study, anxiety
disorders, which is a mental disorder, are discussed and it is tried to analyze
whether it affected stock market returns. The hypothesis of this study is “the
stock market is affected by the prevalence of anxiety disorders”.
... We would argue that this reflects a superficial view of the innovation process that neglects unintended consequences of assetization and concentration of knowledge. Among the few recent exceptions, Durand and Gueuder (2018) argue that intellectual monopolies fuel weak investment since the monopolization of knowledge by and beyond IPRs blocks potentially profitable opportunities. Hence, at the global level, while intangible accumulation is associated with market power that increases prices per unit of investment, it does not translate to the overall growth of the economy (Rabinovich, 2020). ...
In this chapter, we introduce and further develop the intellectual monopoly concept and argue that US and Chinese tech giants are paradigmatic examples. We distinguish different degrees of intellectual monopoly and identify data-driven intellectual monopolies as belonging to the highest degree. They have monopolized a new method of invention: the application of deep learning and neural networks to process big data, producing digital intelligence that locates the most promising new combinations of the existing elements of knowledge. The chapter considers the threats for society of tech giants’ consolidation as data-driven intellectual monopolies.
... La littérature mainstream autour de la notion d'immatériel est foisonnante (Corrado et al., 2005(Corrado et al., , 2013Corrado & Hulten, 2010;France Stratégie et al., 2018;Haskel & Westlake, 2018) 18 . Celle-ci concentre 18 Il existe une littérature plus critique sur la relation immatériel / profit (Durand & Gueuder, 2018;Durand & Milberg, 2020;Orhangazi, 2019;Rikap, 2021). Pour autant, ils conservent une définition de l'immatériel sensiblement identique, mais insistent sur le pouvoir que confère la production et le contrôle des intangibles sur les chaînes globales de valeurs : « We can identify four distinct (though sometimes overlapping) functions of intangible assets. ...
L’objectif principal de cette thèse est de caractériser, sous la forme d’un idéal type, la « mobilisation totale » de la force de travail, les mutations de l’organisation du travail en France depuis la fin de la période fordienne. À partir d’une réflexion autour de la connaissance nécessaire à la production, de sa nature et de sa forme, cette thèse analyse les mutations du contrôle sur le travail entre la fin des années 1970 et la période contemporaine. Centrée sur les travaux du journaliste, philosophe et économiste, André Gorz, cette thèse emprunte aux corpus théoriques marxistes et régulationnistes, tels que les thèses autour du capitalisme cognitif, et plus généralement aux sciences de gestion et à la sociologie du travail, pour caractériser les mutations du mode de production depuis la fin du régime d’accumulation fordiste. La première partie développe les travaux autour du capitalisme cognitif ainsi que les critiques qu’André Gorz en a proposé. Le concept de « mobilisation totale » est dégagé de l’oeuvre de Gorz et confronté aux travaux en économie, en sociologie du travail et en sciences de gestions sur les évolutions du travail. La seconde partie permet d’étendre l’analyse à l’ensemble des salariés grâce à l’utilisation de l’enquête emploi conditions de travail – risques psychosociaux. L’identification et l’analyse des évolutions des contraintes qui pèsent sur le travail permettent de discuter la notion et de valider sa pertinente pour caractériser les évolutions du travail des salariés en général. La troisième partie propose d’étendre l’analyse au secteur de la santé, en montrant que le travail des soignants à l’hôpital public fait face à une taylorisation du soin. Néanmoins, cette taylorisation ne doit pas s’analyser au travers d’une analogie avec la période fordiste, mais plutôt comme l’articulation de principes de gestion du travail qui porte une logique de dépossession des soignants des connaissances nécessaires à la production, produisant, sous des modalités différentes du secteur privé, une « mobilisation totale » de la force de travail.
... Foster does not, however, explain the mechanism, as this study does. Durand and Gueuder (2018) discusses monopolisation and financialisation as phenomena of last decades however does not construct a causality from monopolisation to financialisation, except that monopolisation makes retained earnings useless 6 No econometric analysis preferred as main assumptions of econometry relying on ergodicity, predictable future and normal distribution are inconsistent with the post-Keynesian main assumptions of nonergodicity and fundemantal uncertainty of the future. ...
