Competition & Change最新文献

Making “strategic autonomy” rhyme with “fiscal austerity?” Unresolved conflicts of (geo)economic ideas in EU infrastructure policy 让 "战略自主 "与 "财政紧缩 "押韵？欧盟基础设施政策中尚未解决的（地缘）经济理念冲突

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-08-28 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241277255

Joscha Abels

{"title":"Making “strategic autonomy” rhyme with “fiscal austerity?” Unresolved conflicts of (geo)economic ideas in EU infrastructure policy","authors":"Joscha Abels","doi":"10.1177/10245294241277255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294241277255","url":null,"abstract":"As a reaction to intensifying global competition, measures related to strategic autonomy are gaining traction on the EU level. Yet they coincide with a general return to fiscal consolidation. With current developments more inconclusive than previously suggested, this article asks how the central actors in EU economic policy, both public and private, position themselves in the autonomy-austerity conflict. It introduces a political-economic approach to the role of (geo)economic ideas and state-business relations in EU policy formation. The article focuses on infrastructure policy as a main field within which the conflict unfolds. A content analysis of official documents systematically maps the positions of relevant actors. While an influential group of southern finance ministries, Directorates-General, center-left parties, and trade unions is promoting strategic autonomy, a shrinking constellation around fiscal austerity contains relevant veto players. The deadlock results in the attempt to reconcile both ideas via “targeted flexibility”: consolidation via the expenditure side and a delegitimization of non-investment spending, coupled with a public de-risking of private investments. The approach is supported by European capital, yet highly inconsistent and runs up against pro-austerity forces. The findings have strong implications for the EU’s future geoeconomic strategy and its ability to compete globally.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142213221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Erratum to “An international interface: Democratic planning in a global context” 国际界面：全球背景下的民主规划

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-08-05 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241260991

引用次数: 0

The regulator’s trilemma: On the limits of technocratic governance in digital markets 监管者的三难困境：论数字市场技术官僚治理的局限性

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-07-25 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241266048

Nick O'Donovan

{"title":"The regulator’s trilemma: On the limits of technocratic governance in digital markets","authors":"Nick O'Donovan","doi":"10.1177/10245294241266048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294241266048","url":null,"abstract":"Policymakers increasingly recognise the need for regulatory intervention in the digital economy to promote competition, privacy and innovation, among other policy objectives. Much policy-focused literature presents regulation as a technical puzzle to be ‘solved’ through identification of the appropriate intervention in a particular context, though there is persistent disagreement among experts about what remedies are preferable in different digital markets. At the same time, many external observers emphasise the sheer multiplicity of public policy objectives that regulatory interventions might fulfil, claiming that conflicts between these objectives are inevitable and thus require political rather than technocratic solutions. This article attempts to bridge the gap between these perspectives through a novel theoretical analysis of digital markets characterised by strong network effects, conceptualising different markets in terms of common underlying structural characteristics. The resulting framework helps policymakers to anticipate which remedies will safeguard competition, privacy and innovation/efficiency under what circumstances, both in well-established digital markets and with respect to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. In so doing, it also highlights limits to the technocratic governance of digital markets, identifying circumstances in which conflicts between competing public values cannot be neatly resolved through technocratic regulatory intervention alone.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141776976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The invisible leverage of the rich. Absentee debtors and their hedge funds 富人的隐形杠杆缺席债务人及其对冲基金

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-07-20 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241265819

Stefano Sgambati

{"title":"The invisible leverage of the rich. Absentee debtors and their hedge funds","authors":"Stefano Sgambati","doi":"10.1177/10245294241265819","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294241265819","url":null,"abstract":"The existing literature on finance, debt, and inequality depicts economic elites as a creditor class. According to a popular thesis, over the past four decades, the rich and ultra-rich households have experienced a saving glut (excess income), which they have invested in the debts of the poor and their governments. While it is undeniable that the rich have expanded their income share at the expenses of the poor, to refer to them as ‘creditors’ or ‘lenders’ is a misrepresentation of how they actually expand their wealth and income shares by financial means. For it conceals the fact that a great deal of their investments is leveraged, that is, carried out with borrowed money. This article shows that the debts generated for the sake of affluent households easily surpass those of all other households. However, these debts are not accounted for in statistics on household debt. This is because affluent households, particularly multi-millionaires and billionaires inside the top 1%, do not simply borrow from banks, like normal households do, but they are instead absentee debtors who borrow through corporate structures of which they are dominant shareholders and ultimate beneficiaries. To gain an insight into their invisible leverage, the article looks at how much hedge funds borrow and why their leverage matters.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141746404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Partial organization and economic coordination: The gradual re-organization of Finnish corporatism 部分组织和经济协调：芬兰公司制的逐步重组

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-07-19 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241258507

Ville-Pekka Sorsa, Joel Kaitila, Antti Alaja

引用次数: 0

Shareholder value orientation, corporate cash piles, and the myth of financial accumulation 股东价值导向、公司现金堆和金融积累的神话

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-06-25 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241264854

Niall Reddy

{"title":"Shareholder value orientation, corporate cash piles, and the myth of financial accumulation","authors":"Niall Reddy","doi":"10.1177/10245294241264854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294241264854","url":null,"abstract":"Financialization scholars argue that the growing financial balance sheets of non-financial corporations indicate a “financial turn in accumulation” driven by the rise of shareholder value orientation (SVO). In this paper, I test whether greater shareholder influence or shareholder-aligning managerial incentives can explain the more rapid accumulation of financial assets among US NFCs. I find that shareholder power is associated with some increase in short-term financial assets but only in the case of certain shareholder types, in particular high turnover institutional investors. The magnitudes of the effect are small however, and only pertain to smaller firms. Moreover, ownership concentration by these impatient investor types is declining. The results suggest that changing corporate governance patterns have little capacity to explain balance sheet financialization. I argue that mainstream accounts focused on the precautionary savings of new, research-intensive firms and tax arbitrage amongst multinationals offer a better explanation for growing financial balances than the financial accumulation hypothesis. Neither of these imply a substitution of financial for real investment, which calls into question an important mechanism thought to connect financialization to secular stagnation and rising inequality.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141510986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Economic statecraft by design and by default: The political economy of the 5G-Huawei bans in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany 设计和默认的经济国策：美国、英国和德国对华为5G禁令的政治经济学研究

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-06-24 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241262087

Moritz F. Walter, Christine Trampusch

{"title":"Economic statecraft by design and by default: The political economy of the 5G-Huawei bans in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany","authors":"Moritz F. Walter, Christine Trampusch","doi":"10.1177/10245294241262087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294241262087","url":null,"abstract":"The ban of Huawei by the United States and European governments from their 5G infrastructure has been described in recent literature as economic statecraft. However, it remains under researched that in these ban decisions the domestic political and economic constellations differed. To address this gap, this study adopts an agency perspective and compares 5G Huawei policies in the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom. While in the United States the ban was unanimously supported by state actors and telecommunication companies and equipment manufacturers, in the United Kingdom and Germany telecommunication companies and (initially also) governments were opposing the ban. There, we also observe interests from governing parliamentarians across political parties representing cyber security interests prevail in the domestic policy making processes over political and economic actors representing economic interests. In line with recent works on the domestic politics of economic statecraft and adopting the method of structured, focused comparison our inductive, theory developing case study reveals that economic statecraft is a dyadic concept between ‘by default’ and ‘by design’. We show that economic statecraft occurs ‘by default’ in the manner that states’ and businesses’ interests align, it happens ‘by design’ in the manner that states’ and businesses’ interests diverge. We contribute to previous literature that theory building on economic statecraft should start before the notions of power and policy preferences by a closer inspection of the domestic interest constellations.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141510987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Tokenization and the banking system: Redefining authority in the blockchain era 代币化与银行系统：在区块链时代重新定义权威

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-05-30 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241258255

Alexandru-Stefan Goghie

{"title":"Tokenization and the banking system: Redefining authority in the blockchain era","authors":"Alexandru-Stefan Goghie","doi":"10.1177/10245294241258255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294241258255","url":null,"abstract":"In the rapidly evolving realm of financial technology, blockchain integration has catalyzed transformative changes. This study delves into the intricate relationship between traditional banks and the blockchain technology. Drawing from the perspectives of International Political Economy (IPE) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), this study understands the blockchain technology through the lens of infrastructure, where power dynamics are constantly shaped by the entity wielding the strongest agency. This analysis delves into how traditional banks strategically leverage blockchain not only for technological integration but to exert control. Grounded in the concept of “power of social interaction,” this study reveals how and why banks secure a central position within this evolving infrastructure, dynamically influencing the interplay between technology and financial institutions. A focal point of this exploration is the tokenization process, which illustrates how banks actively engage with blockchain, seamlessly integrating it into their structures to shape the infrastructure narratives. By contributing insights into the implications of blockchain adoption by traditional banks, this study enhances understanding of power dynamics within financial infrastructures and their transformative potential, underscoring the process of infrastructuring governing the endeavor to attain a central position within an infrastructure.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141192412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Technology and monetary sovereignty: Understanding motivations for central bank digital currencies 技术与货币主权：了解中央银行数字货币的动机

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-05-29 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241257168

Colin Chia

引用次数: 0

Authoritarian populist turn and market capture in Turkey: The political economy of public procurement 土耳其的专制民粹主义转向和市场俘获：公共采购的政治经济学

IF 3.9 2区社会学

Competition & Change Pub Date : 2024-05-27 DOI: 10.1177/10245294241235390

Mustafa Kutlay, Kerem Yıldırım

{"title":"Authoritarian populist turn and market capture in Turkey: The political economy of public procurement","authors":"Mustafa Kutlay, Kerem Yıldırım","doi":"10.1177/10245294241235390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294241235390","url":null,"abstract":"The state’s economic role has become more visible, beyond regulatory features, since the 2008 global financial crisis. In several cases, the new interventionist turn goes parallel to the authoritarian populist turn in international politics. Although the two processes have their own dynamics, they are still interrelated. Rather than abolishing the façade of the market economy, right-wing authoritarian populist leaders are more likely to capture the market through politically loyal economic actors. To this end, public procurement is one of the fundamental mechanisms to allocate resources. In this paper, we tested this argument in the case of Turkey by examining all public procurement deals (867,260 in total) between 2010 and 2019. We found that over a relatively short period of 10 years, the level of competitiveness, measured by the effective number of companies that receive public procurement, has decreased substantively. We also showed that the decrease in competitiveness was not limited only to the highest level of procurement deals. Across all deciles of procurement deals, competition has decreased, especially after 2013 – and this trend has continued since then.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141170256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0