Search

Begin New Search Publishing Institution Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)

41. Towards a Political Economy of Monetary Dependency: The Case of the CFA Franc in West Africa

Author:
Kai Koddenbrock and Ndongo Samba Sylla
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the most neglected case of monetary dependency: the CFA franc. This currency arrangement was born in 1945, during the colonial era, but it still operates in the same ways more than 70 years later in fourteen countries in Africa, mostly former French colonies. Engaging with the seminal African scholarship by Joseph Pouemi on internal and external monetary repression and the emergent literature on “financial subordination,” we introduce the notion of the “chain of monetary dependency,” consisting of an external and an internal part. We argue that the CFA franc provides an extreme but paradigmatic example of this chain. The CFA franc is paradigmatic because of the very strong external repression of monetary and financial policy through US dollar and euro dependence. Internally, the CFA franc arrangement radicalizes the constraints imposed on all central bank policies and bank-firm relations in the Global South and makes it more difficult to pursue growth strategies geared towards the well-being of the broader population.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Monetary Policy, and Currency
Political Geography:
France

42. Structural Exchange Pays Off: Reciprocity in Boards and Executive Compensations in US Firms (1990–2015)

Author:
Olivier Godechot, Joanne Horton, and Yuval Millo
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
We study the influence of the corporate board network on executive pay for 3,395 US firms over the period from 1990 to 2015. Drawing on structural anthropology and social exchange theory, we identify three elementary structures through which the interlocking network captures an obvious form of objective reciprocity between executives from different firms: restricted exchange, when two executives sit on each other’s respective boards; delayed exchange, when y sits on the board of x after the end of x’s mandate on the board of y ; and generalized exchange, when x sits on the board of y, who sits on the board of z, who sits on the board of x. Our results suggest that these ties, although not very common, are more frequent than those calculated by chance. We also find that the three structures of reciprocity have a positive impact on executive pay, especially on bonuses and total cash. We use the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) as a natural experiment to confirm our first findings. The impact on pay disappears after 2004, once these types of exchanges are constrained. Although linked to executive pay, these structures are not tied to any indicator of firm performance. This leads us to interpret them as a rent extraction phenomenon.
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, Income Inequality, Business, and Public Sector
Political Geography:
United States

43. Uncertain Futures: Imaginaries, Narratives, and Calculative Technologies

Author:
Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
Dynamic capitalist economies are characterised by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. How then do economic actors form expectations and decide how to act despite this uncertainty? This paper focuses on the role played by imaginaries, narratives, and calculative technologies, and argues that the market impact of shared calculation devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of ‘narrative economics’ and a theory of fictional (rather than rational) expectations. When expectations cannot be anchored in objective probability functions, the future belongs to those with the market, political, or rhetorical power to make their models or stories count. The paper also explores the dangers of analytical monocultures and the discourse of best practice in conditions of uncertainty, and considers the link between uncertainty and some aspects of populism.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Capitalism, Innovation, Uncertainty, and Calculation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

44. Competing with Whom? European Tax Competition, the “Great Fragmentation of the Firm,” and Varieties of FDI Attraction Profiles

Author:
Javier Garcia-Bernardo and Arjan Reurink
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
International tax competition is generally framed as states competing for foreign direct investment (FDI), and analyses of the phenomenon draw heavily on FDI statistics. In and of themselves, however, FDI statistics are merely a quantification of the value of investment projects and tell us little about the heterogeneity of these projects and the distinct patterns of competitive dynamics between countries they generate. In this paper, we create a more sophisticated understanding of international tax competition by pointing out its variegated nature. To do so, we introduce the notion of the “great fragmentation of the firm” to distinguish between five categories of FDI: manufacturing affiliates, shared service centers, research and development facilities, intermediate holding companies, and top holding companies. Using a novel combination of firm-level and country-level data, we identify for each category of FDI which European Union member states are most successful in attracting it, what macro-institutional and tax arrangements they rely on for doing so, and what benefits they receive from it in terms of tax revenues and employment creation. In this way we were able to identify five distinct FDI attraction profiles and show that, rather than being a game of all against all, tax competition in the European Union increasingly takes place amongst subsets of countries that compete for similar categories of FDI.
Topic:
Foreign Direct Investment, European Union, Global Value Chains, Wealth, Tax Competition, and Transnational Corporations
Political Geography:
Europe

45. Innovation and Precarity: Workplace Discourse in Twenty-First Century Capitalism

Author:
Sidney Rothstein
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
This paper analyzes discourse in the workplace in order to explain puzzling patterns of precarity in twenty-first century capitalism. Tech workers’ central role in digital transformation endows them with labor market power reflected by their high wages, but during economic downturns, when demand for their skills decreases, even they are vulnerable to downsizing. Comparing workers’ responses to downsizing at two sites of an American tech firm, this paper shows how management disempowers workers by framing the employment relationship in a financial discourse. Disposing workers to believe that their jobs are threatened by market forces beyond their control, rather than by managers’ decisions, this financial discourse undermines labor’s established power resources by persuading workers that mobilizing will be ineffective in protecting their jobs. Relying on detailed case study evidence, this paper demonstrates the importance of discourse to explaining variation in worker power. It argues that the workplace should play a larger role in comparative political economy, particularly in explaining labor market outcomes related to digital transformation.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Hegemony, Capitalism, Discourse, Knowledge Economy, Power, and Digital Platform Workers
Political Geography:
Global Focus

46. A Politics of Hope: The Making of Brazil’s Post-Neoliberal New Middle Class

Author:
Moises Kopper
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
How does hope emerge as a life-altering possibility against the backdrop of economic precarity, political disregard, and soaring inequality? This paper explores the role of hope as both a political-economic construct and an infrastructural affect in the wake of policy implementation. It draws on a five-year ethnography among community leaders, housing activists, planners, politicians, state officials, and market representatives involved in the implementation of Minha Casa Minha Vida, Brazil’s largest social housing program. In recent years, low-income projects have become the battleground for experimental, post-neoliberal forms of democratic governance via inclusive consumption. These public–private housing infrastructures give insight into the relationship between material hope and the making of Latin America’s “pink tide” new middle classes: how grassroots communities organize around hierarchies of worthiness to allocate wellbeing-enhancing state benefits, and how the uneven distribution of these benefits sustains the constitution of emerging, albeit temporary, collectives of consumer citizens.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Citizenship, Middle Class, Post-Neoliberalism, and Social Housing
Political Geography:
Brazil and South America

47. Changing Perspectives in Political Economy

Author:
Renate Mayntz
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
The history of a research field called political economy dates back to the eighteenth century, giving rise to a variety of disciplinary approaches, and experienced a renaissance as a multidisciplinary field after the Second World War, combining economic, political science, and sociological approaches. The divergence between economic globalization and the nationally restricted scope of economic policy directs interest to the relationship between politics and the economy. A quantitative analysis of the articles published in two dedicated political economy journals shows major trends of the developing research field. The relationship between politics and economy is interpreted rather widely, and research is largely focused on Western capitalist nations. In conclusion, two avenues for further research in the field are briefly discussed.
Topic:
Political Economy, Capitalism, and History
Political Geography:
Europe

48. Strong Firms, Weak Banks: The Financial Consequences of Germany’s Export-Led Growth Model

Author:
Benjamin Braun and Richard Deeg
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
The financial foundation of Germany’s manufacturing success, according to the comparative capitalism literature, is an ample supply of long-term capital, provided to firms by a three-pillar banking system and “patient” domestic shareholders. This premise also informs the recent literature on growth models, which documents a shift towards a purely exportled growth model in Germany since the 1990s. We challenge this common assumption of continuity in the German financial system. Export-led growth, characterized by aggregate wage suppression and high corporate profits, has allowed non-financial corporations to increasingly finance investment out of retained earnings, thus lowering their dependence on external finance. This paper documents this trend and shows that business lending by banks has increasingly been constrained on the demand side, reducing the power – and relevance – of banks vis-à-vis German industry. The case study suggests a need for students of growth models to pay greater attention to the dynamic interaction between institutional sectors in general, and between the financial and the non-financial sectors in particular.
Topic:
Finance, Business, Banks, Institutions, and Corporations
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

49. An Overview of German New Economic Sociology and the Contribution of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Author:
John Wilkinson
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
New economic sociology (NES) in Germany has many similarities with economic sociology in the United States in its conscious efforts to institutionalize its presence within the broader sociology community, its promotion of a canon via handbooks, and its focus on the sociology of markets. At the same time, it differs in its stronger connections to the German classics, the greater vitality of a macrosociological tradition in Germany, the prior existence of a “bridging” generation of economic sociologists, and its later consolidation in a period of neo-liberal globalization, all of which have given NES in the German-speaking world a distinctive character. In addition, it has been influenced by successive waves of French economic sociology – Bourdieu, convention, and actor-network theory – and its bilingual academic tradition has ensured its integration into English-speaking NES. In its contribution to the sociology of markets, the fact that NES emerged later in Germany than in the US led to a greater concern with quality markets rather than commodity markets, and a concomitantly greater attention to issues of value and price. These latter themes, in their turn, establish a continuity with German economic sociology’s enduring concern with understanding the role of money. Not surprisingly, therefore, German NES is now making key contributions to discussions on the sociology of money and is increasingly situating its analysis within the broader dynamic of capitalism and current processes of financialization.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Sociology, and Discipline
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

50. Is There a Motherhood Penalty in Academia? The Gendered Effect of Children on Academic Publications

Author:
Mark Lutter and Miriam Schröder
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
Based on data that tracks CV and publication records as well as survey information from sociologists in German academia, we examine the effects of parenthood on the publication output of male and female academics. Results indicate that having children leads to a significant decline in the number of publications by women, while not affecting the number of publications by men. We also find that the gendered effect of children on productivity hardly mitigates differences in publication output between men and women, as women still publish about 20 percent less than men after controlling for the adverse effects of children on productivity. We further find that the gendered effect of childbearing depends partly on prior levels of women’s academic achievements, which suggests mechanisms of performance-driven self-selection. Lower-performing women tend to suffer a stronger motherhood penalty, while the publication output of more successful women (who have been granted academic awards) is not reduced through childbirth. The results indicate that women are better at managing the “double burden” of parenthood and career if external, award-giving committees have bestowed prestige upon them and indicated their potential for a scientific career. Overall, these findings contribute to a better understanding of how to reduce the adverse effect of children on female publication output.
Topic:
Children, Inequality, Academia, Gender, and Motherhood
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany