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doi: 10.1080/02255189.2003.9668913pmid: N/A
Recent analyses have related the increasing importance of finance capital in the global economy to the sluggishness and unevenness of growth in the world system. This paper is concerned with investigating the changing structure and role of finance and its links with the real economy following financial liberalization. It discusses the transmission mechanisms through which the “effects” of finance on the real economy are revealed, and examines in detail the nature of these effects in the case of Japan, which epitomized the tendency among late industrializers to shape a specific financial structure suited to meeting the challenge set by the pre-existing inequality in the international system.
Epstein, Gerald; Power, Dorothy
doi: 10.1080/02255189.2003.9668914pmid: N/A
Abstract We present new estimates of the rentier share of national income for OECD countries for the years between 1960 and 2000. For most countries, the rentier share of income increased significantly during the last several decades, starting in the early 1980s and coinciding with the shift to neo-liberal monetary and financial policies initiated by Margaret Thatcher and Paul Volcker. There is no evidence of a negative correlation between rentier shares and non-financial corporate shares of income. However, rentier shares do decline in those semi-industrialized countries that experienced financial crises. These findings are consistent with the view that financial liberalization has been associated with the increased power of an international rentier class, whose interests are aligned with those of non-financial corporations in the richer countries, but whose interests conflict with rentiers in developing countries that experience financial crises.
doi: 10.1080/02255189.2003.9668915pmid: N/A
The purpose of this paper is twofold: using time series econometrics, we first investigate the determinants of short-term foreign capital inflows for Turkey following its capital account liberalization in 1989. We next investigate the changing nature of the private investment function under post-capital account liberalization and deduce hypotheses on its correlation with capital inflows and the key macroeconomic prices, such as the exchange rate, the real rate of interest, and real wages. Our results suggest that financial capital inflows have a significant negative correlation with the industrial production index and trade openness, and are positively correlated with real currency appreciation. Fixed private investment was found to have an inconclusive relationship with financial capital inflows. Real wage costs were observed to carry a significant negative relationship with private investment, indicating that at a time of currency appreciation, investors had to rely on declining wage costs in order to keep their export competitiveness. Under the volatile and uncertain conditions of speculation-driven investment patterns, the downward flexibility of real wages has to be seen as a concomitant factor of the post-financial liberalization episodes.
Alper, C. Emre; Alper, Ziya Önis
doi: 10.1080/02255189.2003.9668916pmid: N/A
Abstract Recurring financial crises in the semi-periphery of the international economic system have raised serious questions concerning the role of the IMF in the era of financial globalization, particularly in the aftermath of the Asian Crisis of 1997. This paper attempts to provide a critical and, at the same time, balanced perspective on the Fund's involvement in crisis-ridden emerging markets, with special reference to the recent Turkish experience. The analysis points towards both the limitations underlying the Fund's approach and some of the dilemmas faced by the organization in trying to reform the economies of debtor countries, given the nature of the domestic political environment in those countries. It is also argued that the kinds of reforms promoted by the Fund are incomplete, insofar as they focus only on the regulatory role of the state, neglecting issues relating to income distribution and longer-term development. Two key conclusions follow: firstly, crisis-ridden countries need to develop a domestic political base to “internalize” the kind of reforms sponsored by the IMF, which are necessary to enable these countries to benefit from the process of globalization. Secondly, the countries concerned need to extend their horizons and develop their domestic capacities in areas such as income distribution and longer-term competitiveness, areas not traditionally emphasized by the Fund.
doi: 10.1080/02255189.2003.9668917pmid: N/A
In order to better understand the dynamics involved in emergency food aid programs, this paper analyzes the case of Kinshasa (1992–1995). The interaction between local health personnel engaged in the programme and the—potential, legitimate, and unintended—beneficiaries of the aid is central to this paper. The classical concepts of moral hazard and adverse selection, often cited in the current literature on target poverty programs, only partly capture the reality of the situation on the ground. An intervention such as a food aid program should be judged on its capacity to open up spaces of action and negotiation to actors who traditionally occupy only marginal places in them.
doi: 10.1080/02255189.2003.9668918pmid: N/A
Neo-liberalism advocates theoretical and methodological approaches to community-based participatory research and development that are value-laden and liberal democratic. However, community-based development in the Guyanese gold and bauxite mining communities through community non-wage benefits is anything but liberal democratic. The social relations in these communities are microcosms of the class, race, and gender inequalities endemic in capitalist societies. These inequalities reflect the political and economic domination of workers by those who own and/or control the productive forces. Social unrest among the workers, however, pressures mining firms to improve the community non-wage benefits they supply. An alternative people-centred and bottom-up approach to community-based participatory development is needed to empower the inhabitants in the gold and bauxite mining communities.
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