Environmental regulation and corporate financialization: insight from Blue Sky Protection Campaign in China.

Environmental regulation restricts corporate pollution emissions and affects corporate investment decisions and asset allocation. Based on the data of A-share listed enterprises in China from 2013 to 2021 and the difference in differences (DID) model, this paper identifies the impact of environmental regulation on corporate financialization with the help of the "Blue Sky Protection Campaign (2018-2020)" (BSPC) of China. The results indicate that environmental regulation has a crowding-out effect on corporate financialization. Enterprises with stricter financing constraints receive more significant crowding-out effects. This paper provides a new perspective on the "Porter hypothesis." Under the constraint of financial resources and high environmental protection costs, enterprises carry out innovative activities and environmental protection investments by consuming financial assets to reduce the risk of environmental violations. The government's environmental regulation is an effective way to guide the financial development of enterprises, control environmental pollution, and promote enterprise innovation.

The Fault Lines of Inequality: COVID 19 and the Politics of Financialization

This book examines how decisions made by the Conservative government during the COVID19 pandemic have increased economic inequality in the UK. Decades of austerity, asset-based welfare and financialization had already exacerbated social divisions in the UK prior to the pandemic. The political blueprint behind these measures combined Privatized Keynesianism and the Asset Economy. To explain, economists have highlighted that inequality derives from the fact that income from wealth increases at a faster rate than income from wages. The ensuing political assumption is that - in the face of pressures on public finances - promoting asset ownership is the best alternative to government-funded welfare schemes. What this meant, as the pandemic unfolded, was that when tough decisions about resource allocation needed to be made, the UK Treasury and the Bank of England found almost unlimited funds to rescue and protect asset-holders and middle-income homeowners, whilst reverting to a narrative of "misfortune" for the asset-less poor. This book assesses the political decisions taken by UK policymakers during 2020-21 and their consequences. In doing so, it challenges policymakers and the informed public to re-consider the morality of inequality, and to make alternative decisions to promote a more ecologically sustainable, caring, equal and prosperous society. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.

Financialized Classification Systems and Public Policy: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Crisis Response

We utilize classification systems research to examine the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on marginalized communities and the failures of policy makers to adequately respond to those most in need. Classification situations are individual positions within the market, generated via the mass collection and aggregation of individual financial and behavioral data, that are used to categorize people into price-differentiated opportunities. In a financialized economy, where profits are increasingly accumulated through financial channels, thereby entrenching the role of financial institutions and motives at the center of economic activity, one's classification situation operates to maximize value for shareholders. Importantly, in a neoliberal economy, where the logic of the market is used to guide social and political policy more broadly, classification situations are the mechanism by which individuals are allocated resources, opportunities, hardships, and other socio-political economic outcomes. In this paper we argue that the fiscal and monetary responses to COVID-19 were designed to support financialized interests and, as a consequence, the resources and protections of the state were allocated not to those most at risk but, rather, to those whose classification situation promised a stronger return on investment. © 2023 The Association for Social Economics.

Cointegration between high base metals prices and backwardation: Getting ready for the metals super-cycle

This paper is devoted to test agents' behavior in the markets of hard commodities by trying to distinguish between managing future price structures to hedge their positions and speculating in on prices. We do a triple analysis: cointegration on the time series, structural breaks over the full time series and panel data. The analysis of the full series and the identification of structural breaks allows us to discover the connection between high prices and the negative futures price structure (backwardation) in rising prices scenarios of tin, copper, aluminium, and zinc. Moreover, we obtain that the base metals full matrix (price and futures price structure) is cointegrated in our analysis that uses panel data methods. We believe that these results are important for agents in the markets, as commodity traders or brokers, to maximize profits in their hedging positions.

The history and future of the tax state: Possibilities for a new fiscal politics beyond neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is marked by fiscal austerity. Yet, in response to the COVID-19 crisis states again, briefly, began to exercise fiscal discretion. We reflect on the potential for a more enduring shift in fiscal politics beyond neoliberalism by placing recent developments in the historical context of the ‘tax state'. We make two claims. First, we argue that different phases of capitalism are reflected in, and can be understood through, changes in fiscal accounting practices that demarcate public and private, and mark turning points for the role of the state within capitalism. Charting the unravelling of the Keynesian welfare state, we propose a fiscal understanding of neoliberalism in which asymmetric applications of capital accounting practices facilitated the financialisation of the state. Second, we argue democratic pressures are giving rise to forms of ‘fiscal hybridity' that reassert accounting symmetries between public and private wealth to potentially create ‘fiscal space'. We examine how the fiscal actions taken by states in response to COVID-19 express hybridity, reflecting contestation over neoliberal policy models that was emerging prior to the pandemic, as fiscal politics shifts the state's focus to its role as creditor, underwriter and investor. © 2023 The Authors

Investigating financialization perspective of oil prices, green bonds, and stock market movement in COVID-19: empirical study of E7 economies.

The drastic influence of the COVID-19 crisis halted almost every industry and economy and made the quality of doing business in the oil industry and stock markets large. Also, COVID-19 diminished financial and economic performance to a greater extent. This issue still warrants modern solutions. Thus, preceding research inquired about the financialization perspective of oil prices, green bonds, and stock market movement in the COVID-19 crisis. For this, E7 economies' data is selected to analyze the empirical findings of the research. The findings revealed that the green bonds have a weak link to crude oil, a weak correlation to stocks in the E7 settings, and a strong correlation to gold prices. While stock market return is also little correlated in COVID-19, stock volatility is highly significant in both directions with oil prices and green bonds movement. The hedging ratio has also shown a significant connection with oil prices and green bonds movement in determining the financialization of E7 economies. Hence, the study directs the implications for important industrial planning and policymaking decisions.

Financializing Through Crisis? Student Housing and Studentification During the Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond

The emergence of purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) as a ‘global' asset class has physically and socially transformed university cities through ‘new-build studentification' implicated in the financialization of urban space. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the risk inherent in this asset's reliance on a narrow submarket, as students' domestic and international mobilities were temporarily disrupted. We interrogate PBSA providers' response to the pandemic through the analysis of real estate consultancy reports, firms' annual reports and other investor-facing documents, in Africa, Australia, Europe and North America, demonstrating how the financialization of this niche sector is sustained through crisis. Tactics include building goodwill to expand market share, temporarily reorienting towards domestic students and operational strategies to cut costs and increase revenues. Despite the sector's optimism, these approaches amplify existing trends of finance-driven new-build studentification in university cities, characterized by uneven development, the privatization of student housing and deepening class and age segregation. © 2023 The Authors. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Dutch Geographical Society / Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap.

Financialization and Systemic Income Inequality: A Call to Action for Social Work Educators and Practitioners

The transition to a financialized economy has had a devastating impact on workers and consumers and exacerbated wealth and income inequality in the United States and around the world. In this article, the authors explain financialization, a two-fold economic strategy whereby individual corporations invest in the financial market- rather than make capital improvements- to earn a profit and global and domestic economies heavily invest in and depend upon financial, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) ventures. If the social work profession is to meet its obligation to promote social and economic justice, practitioners and students must understand this economic strategy and its consequences. The social work education, practice, and policy literature elaborates upon the role that practitioners can play in helping clients achieve financial literacy. This reflects a largely micro approach to the problems created and maintained by financialization. Macro interventions are required, however, since financialization is indicative of and exacerbates systemic economic inequality. Therefore, the authors identify suggested content for the generalist and foundation practice, policy, field, and continuing education curricula that identifies the knowledge and skills needed to help clients with their financial difficulties and challenges the underlying economic forces that contributed to them.

Financialization, Structural Power, and the Global Financial Crisis for Europe's Core and Periphery

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), European governments intervened to support domestic financial systems;several years later, peripheral European economies were at greater risk of having domestic financial crises transform into fiscal crises. While mainstream economic thinking predicts financial markets will punish risky bank behavior with higher interest rates and punitive resolution measures, in fact, banks in core European economies, which engaged in riskier activity in the subprime mortgage market, faced preferential treatment in the aftermath of the GFC. This article argues that financialization, the increased structural economic power of financial institutions, increased the structural power of core members of the Eurozone to direct supranational policies after the GFC. It supports these claims with financial data from balance sheets for a sample of EU economies, as well as institutional analysis of the financial aspects of European integration, and the financial, monetary, and fiscal responses that followed the onset of the GFC. While banks in the Eurozone core were more likely to have engaged in risky behavior, they were more likely to receive liquidity assistance from monetary authorities like the Federal Reserve due to their activity in the US. As Eurozone governments consider how to respond to crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic going forward, policies that more equitably support governments rescuing domestic financial actors should be considered in tandem with broader financial regulations of structurally important economic institutions.

COVID-19 and tail risk contagion across commodity futures markets

This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 on tail risk contagion across commodity futures markets using a copula-based network method. We document a significant increase in the lower and upper tail contagiousness of commodities following the COVID-19 outbreak. Contagion shows an obvious clustering characteristic, that is, there is higher tail risk connectedness between commodities in the same category. Agricultural commodities are significantly less contagious than metals and energy commodities;soft commodities in particular can offer investors significant diversification benefits. There are several hub commodities in the contagion network, chief among them copper, which are good transmitters of shocks and should be treated with caution by investors and regulators. Although tail risk and contagiousness of individual commodities increase together during the pandemic, we find a negative cross-sectional relationship between tail risk and contagiousness, that is, commodities with high tail risk are not necessarily highly contagious and may even be less so.

Covid-19 Pandemia from the Financial Perspective: The Interference of Real and Virtual World

Mass vaccination of the population in some countries of the world and the advantage in these countries of the number of people who recovered over the number of those who fell ill slowly allows them to divide the time before and after the COVID-19 syndrome. This dualism strengthened the social division into real and virtual reality. Many people feel that the balance between these realities has been disturbed. The aim of the study is to indicate the mechanisms leading to permanent hybridization of our everyday life ("new normal"). In the introduction, the authors systematize the context in which the division of humanity into the vaccinated and unvaccinated is taking place. In the first point, they refer to token engineering as a method of transferring assets from the real to the virtual world. In the second point, they recall financialization as a way for the financial world to gain a lasting advantage over the real economy. It is also a departure from comprehensive social ties in favour of remote ones, including those realised through money. In the third point, the authors indicate block-chain technology as a bridge (infrastructure) to the two-way interaction of both realities. In the fourth point, we show how gambling vs. gaming with the use of prestigious goods ensures the transfer of assets acquired in the virtual world to their use in the real world. The conclusion resembles the thesis of the study that blurring the boundaries between real and virtual reality during a pandemic has led to a permanent hybridization of our everyday life.

Employment Opportunities and Income Analysis before and during Covid-19: Indirect Least Square Approach

This study aims to analyze the relationship between employment opportunities and income before and during COVID-19. The research data collection is divided into two time periods, including January to March 2020 which is the period before COVID-19, while April to June 2020 is the period of during COVID-19. Each time period in this study analyzed 100 samples measured using a Likert scale. The method used in this research is simultaneous equation analysis with the Indirect Least Squares (ILS) approach. An important finding in this study for the period before and during COVID-19 is that employment opportunities are positively and significantly affected by infrastructure, economic conditions, government incentives and price stability. Meanwhile, income is positively and significantly influenced by employment opportunities, economic conditions, government incentives and price stability. Although the results of the research are the same for different time periods, based on the results of comparisons there has been a decrease in the contribution to employment and income during COVID-19. This study recommends that the government needs to maintain the stability of the indicators of employment opportunities and income used in this study so that turnover and community income do not decrease, especially during the COVID-19 period.

Spillover effects between commodity and stock markets: A SDSES approach

In this paper, we use a state-dependent sensitivity expected shortfall (SDSES) approach using expectiles. This model enables us to quantify the direction, size, and persistence of risk spillovers among the US and emerging market stock indices and different individual commodities as a function of the state of financial markets (tranquil, normal, and volatile). We obtain high and more significant spillovers and financialization process evidence in the volatile state of the post-Draghi speech and COVID-19 period, especially for the copper and wheat market. Market stock indices and commodity US market index appear to play a major role in the transmission of shocks to other markets, mainly to the wheat market.

A comparative analysis of the financialization of commodities during COVID-19 and the global financial crisis using a quantile regression approach.

The paper aims at studying the financialization of commodities during coronavirus pandemic, thereafter referred as COVID19 and comparing the same with global financial crisis, thereafter referred as GFC. The connectedness among energy commodities particularly after 2020 was found strong, the effect is medium in case of metals and least in case of agriculture commodities. The findings proved that the financialization of commodities during COVID 19 was much strong as compared to GFC. An investigation of comparative analysis of financialization in developed countries and developing countries is also made, which indicates that connectedness is strong in developed countries as compared to developing countries. The findings reveal the effects were less significant from 2010 to 2019. Gold has significant effect with stock market during COVID 19 and GFC period, marking it a safe haven asset during crisis. Overall, the findings cast doubt on the hedging properties of energy commodities. The finding also indicates the COVID 19 had a deeper impact as compared to GFC.

From Big Ag to Big Finance: a market network approach to power in agriculture

Critics charge that agriculture has reached an unsustainable level of consolidation and expropriation, as exemplified by the supply-chain breakdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, advocates suggest the current system serves consumers well by keeping prices low and access to choices high. At the center of this debate rests a disagreement over how to compute market power to identify monopolies and oligopolies. We propose a method to study power across different sectors by using Social Network Analysis (SNA) to analyze key players, the presence of core-periphery structures, and agricultural consolidation. We test our market network approach to power through an analysis of the top ten pork powerhouses. We find that Big Finance is closely tied to Big Ag, and that key players limit the capacity for more peripheral actors, like growers, equipment producers, and regional banks, to engage in the network. We identify system level risk of collapse and suggest pathways for reform.

From post-socialist transition to the COVID-19 crisis: cycles, drivers, and perspectives of subordinate financialization in Latvia

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the specific features of financialization in peripheral and semi-peripheral contexts. To date, the majority of this research, however, consists of broad studies covering a number of countries, leaving a gap in the analysis of case studies, especially from east-central Europe. Therefore, the present article attempts to address this gap through an in-depth analysis of Latvia. The research shows that subordinate financialization is a changing and heterogeneous phenomenon that goes through uneven cycles of advance and retreat, which can lead to divergent dynamics between and within economies.

A Tale of Two Crises in Peru Livelihoods and Social Reproduction During the 1980s and the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the livelihoods of people around the world. Structural economic constraints are highlighted at such moments of crisis, while those most affected have recourse to their repertoire of managing strategies. This case study of people from Allpachico, a Peruvian peasant community, compares their responses to the current crisis with their responses to one in the 1980s, showcasing similarities in strategies (especially reciprocity and the sale or exchange of necessary reproductive tasks and products) and differences in the form they take. In the 1980s, women's work and kin reciprocity helped people access use-values. By 2020, neoliberalism had transformed the national economy and Allpachiqueño migrants overwhelmingly had precarious informal and contract work. Reciprocity and reproductive tasks are still central to livelihood, but now tend to be monetized rather than involving use-values. As that earlier crisis shattered both secure employment and peasant farming to lay the basis for neoliberalism, so now it appears that the COVID-19 pandemic, through the monetization of government support and reciprocity alike, is accelerating financialization in the form of financial services and debt. © 2022 University of Toronto. All rights reserved.

COVID-19, economic crises and digitalisation: How algorithmic management became an alternative to automation.

The COVID-19 crisis witnessed a major rise in investment in software for the digital organisation and rationalisation of work, while investment in robotics is continuously lagging behind expectations. This article argues that we can understand this development as the continuation of the rise of algorithmic management as a technological fix for profitability crises. Thus, in the face of falling wage rates and a structural overaccumulation of capital since the 1970s, algorithmic management has become an alternative to automation. The article reconstructs the history of algorithmic management in connection to economic crises. This allows for periodisation of the rise of algorithmic management from 'computer-integrated manufacturing' to remote work in four waves. In times of crisis, algorithmic management functions as a substitute for investment in 'tangible capital' such as robots. Structural economic forces thus interact with labour conflicts at the company level, shaping the rise of algorithmic management.

Integrating the Role of Green Fiscal Policies With Energy Prices Volatility and Energy Efficiency: Presenting a COVID-19 Perspective

Energy and other related sectors are changing in China. This study attempted to estimate the energy product price volatility with energy efficiency during COVID-19 with the role of green fiscal policies. For this, we applied unit-root tests, ADCC-GARCH, and CO-GARCH techniques to infer the study findings. The results showed that energy price volatility was significantly connected until 2018. More so, the green fiscal policies were significantly connected between energy product price volatility and energy efficiency during COVID-19 (2019-2020). From energy products, the crude oil price volatility was significant at 16.4%, heating oil volatility was significant at 18.2%, natural oil price volatility was 9.7%, gasoline price volatility was 28.7%, and diesel price volatility was 34.1% significant with energy efficiency, due to the intervening role of green fiscal policies. The findings of this study are robust in comparison to previous studies. Multiple stakeholders can take guidelines from the findings of the recent study. As per our best understanding and knowledge, if suggested recommendations are implemented effectively, these results will help to enhance energy efficiency through green fiscal policies in the post-COVID period.

Commodity markets dynamics: What do cross-commodities over different nearest-to-maturities tell us?

In this paper we investigate cross-commodity futures markets connectedness over different nearest-to-maturities. We thus implement time and time-frequency estimations for two constructed baskets of commodities, classified based on common delivery months. Using daily data spanning the period 1995–2020, we provide a set of stylized facts on the extent to which commodity markets are integrated or segmented. More specifically, our results show that the total connectedness is broadly insensitive to maturity. However, after 2008 financial crisis, the connectedness among commodity futures prices increases when the maturity increases. Furthermore, the overall connectedness amplifies during crises periods compared to tranquil periods. Moreover, certain pairwise markets are comparatively highly linked such as crude oil and heating oil, wheat and corn, corn and soybean, and soybean and soybean oil. The results also demonstrate that crude oil and heating oil are net transmitters all the time and across maturities, while natural gas, gold, and wheat are net receivers all the time and across maturities. More interestingly, the frequency decomposition reveals that most of periods of high total connectedness are driven mostly by high frequency components, which may indicate that commodity markets process information rapidly, except for the COVID-19 crisis period where total connectedness has been driven by lower frequency components.