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Discussion Paper Series 2019 #05: Financialization and Institutional Environments

Firm-level Outcomes from a Comparative Perspective Abstract This conceptual paper is concerned with the outcomes of the financialization of non-financial firms, and particularly with the role of institutions in shaping these outcomes. It centers on the question of whether the institutional setting of economies can be expected to moderate the effects of financialization on companies’ employment practices, investment decisions, R&D activities, and value chain. To approach this question, I first sketch out the concept of financialization and its meaning when considering its firm-level implications. I then draw on the literature on comparative institutional theory to identify two opposite institutional settings,...

Discussion Paper Series 2019 #04: Differential Impact of Uncertainty on Exporting Decision in Risk-averse and Risk-taking Firms

Abstract Most existing literature examining the links between firm heterogeneity and entry into exporting assumes that firms are risk neutral. In this study, we relax this strict assumption that firms are risk neutral and introduce different attitudes of firms toward risk as an additional source of firm heterogeneity. In particular, we examine how risk attitude changes the effect of uncertainty on the decision of a firm to export considering the different types of uncertainty faced by the firm, namely, firm-specific and macroeconomic. Our analysis yields two interesting findings. First, firm-specific uncertainty discourages risk-averse firms from participating in foreign markets more...

“Sponge cities”: New perspectives on the progress of urban de-growth in Japan

Sophie Buhnik (MFJ, Tokyo), member of the INCAS Project, released an article on “Sponge cities” in Japan on the website of the French Academic Network on Asian Studies (GIS Asie). In recent years, preventing the relative and absolute decline of small to mid-size cities within national urban systems has become a top priority of many national agendas, even in France, where high birth rates and postwar regional planning policies aiming at balancing territorial development have for a long time concealed the extent of devitalization trends in smaller urban areas (Béal et al. 2017). Although they are still perceived as places...

Discussion Paper Series 2019 #03: The Japanese Consumer Finance Market and its Institutional Changes since the 1980s

Abstract In this article we assert that the joint transformation of public perception about households’ over-indebtedness and financial deregulation had important implication on the government decision to reform the overall consumer credit between 2005 and 2010. On the one hand, the development of collective actions by groups of lawyers to defend borrowers from moneylenders’ abusive practices represents a source of change in the public opinion about over-indebted individuals in a context of long economic stagnation. A systematic press articles’ analysis from 1977 to 2006 shows that the rising number of these collective actions since the early 1990s may have gradually...

Discussion Paper Series 2019 #02: Japanese Political Economy Revisited

Abstract This introductory article to the special issue on “Japanese Political Economy Revisited: Diverse Corporate Change, Institutional Transformation, and Abenomics” starts with a short summaryof the changing perceptions of Japan’s political economy from its meteoric rise as worldwide leading model in the 1970s and 1980s to its demotiontoa problem and reform case since the later 1990s. Based on this overview, it identifies some striking issue and open questions in this conventional view of Japan’s political economy as problem and the high expectations on Abenomics as Japan’s current economic reform programme. Then we discuss the articles of the special issue and...

Discussion Paper Series 2019 #01: Trading Forward: The Paris Bourse in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract Contrary to what law and finance theory would predict, the Paris Bourse was highly liquid at the turn of the 20th century: the traded volumes amounted to four times the French GDP. This magnitude was mainly due to forward trading. The Bourse had developed as a forward market, despite a ban on forward transactions. The official stockbrokers played a key role in legitimizing and legalizing these operations, previously equated with gambling. The 1885 legalizing act initiated a new field of law and made possible further regulatory changes that paved the way for the heyday of the Paris Bourse. Authors...

The INCAS Project Supports Young Researchers

One of the major contributions of the INCAS project has been to support young researchers, in terms of funding but also in terms of research framework and networking with international researchers. In particular, this project has facilitated the transition from Ph.D. candidate to post-doctoral situation.In total, five doctoral students at EHESS who have benefited from the INCAS project have defended or will soon defend their thesis. Pauline Debanes The financialization of the South Korean Political Economy since 1997: Multi-level Analysis of Accumulation Regime Change This thesis examines the financialization of the accumulation regime in South Korea since the 1997 Asian...

Discussion Paper Series 2018 #09: Do Globalization, Deregulation and Financialization Imply a Convergence of Contemporary Capitalisms?

Abstract Distinctive political compromises prevailed and explained various brands of capitalism observed from WWII to the early 1990s. Is this key finding by régulation research been still valid given the wide diffusion of common structural changes since the 2000s: slow productivity in the industrialized world, overwhelming impact of finance, rise of inequalities within many Nation-States in response to deregulation, social and political polarization, open conflict between capitalism and democracy, the trading place between mature and emerging economies? These stylized facts challenge most economic theories but they can be explained by an institutionalist and historical approach that also helps in redesigning...

Discussion Paper Series 2018 #08: Competition among Securities Markets

 Abstract We study the causes and the consequences of two regulatory changes affecting the competition between the transparent Parquet and the OTC-like Coulisse markets in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. First, we provide evidence supporting the interest group theory to explain regulatory changes. By using these changes as natural experiments, we show then that competition widens bid-ask spreads while monopoly makes them narrower. These results are in line with recent literature questioning the effects of “dark” competition: a transparent monopoly could be more effective than competition if the latter involves opaque markets. Authors Pierre-Cyrille Hautcœur (EHESS &...

Discussion Paper Series 2018 #07: Firm-Level Labor Demand for and Macroeconomic Increases in Non-Regular Workers in Japan

Abstract The purpose of this study is to account for the increase in non-regular workers, namely, part-time and dispatched workers, in the Japanese economy from the early 2000s. Our contribution is that we use a firm-level panel dataset extracted from an administrative survey and distinguish between the short-run and long-run determinants of non-regular labor demand. Using the estimated parameters of the labor demand function, we decompose the rate of increase in the macroeconomic non-regular worker ratio into determinant factor contributions. Our major results can be summarized as follows. First, the firm-level determinants of the demand for part-time and dispatched workers...

Discussion Paper Series 2018 #05: The Lyon Stock Exchange: The Survival of the Fittest (1866-1914)

In this paper, the authors look back at the XIX century France to shed light on effect of competition in the stock exchange industry. During the XIX century the Paris financial centre plays a central role in the French financial markets. Nevertheless, six organized regional exchanges do exist along all the second half of the century.

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