INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL CAPITAL MOBILITY IN LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES

This study examines the role of global, regional and domestic saving for domestic investment financing in the panel of Latin American and Caribbean countries along with its three regional integration blocks, namely SICA, Andean Community and MERCOSUR. Panel regression and rolling-window estimation results reveal that global saving is the main source of domestic investment financing in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean, SICA, Andean Community and MERCOSUR. The role of domestic and regional savings is rather limited, implying that there are weak regional and domestic channels that can funnel domestic and regional savings into investment in the analysed samples. The importance of regional agreement saving is insignificant and decreases over the analysed period except for the Andean Community. The results indicate low financial integration of the member-countries within the three regional trade agreements.

Booming with Speed: High-Speed Rail and Regional Green Innovation

Exploiting China’s high-speed rail (HSR) as a quasi-natural experiment, we examine the relationship between the HSR connection and green innovation. The opening of HSR can promote green innovation by facilitating the flow of innovation factors. Using the multiperiod difference-in-differences (DID) model, we find that the regional green innovation performance significantly becomes better following the opening of HSR in the local city. Moreover, in examining the specific mechanisms at work, we find evidence that HSR stimulates green patents through increased labor mobility and research capital mobility. Further analyses show that the facilitating effect of HSR is heterogeneous among cities. Our paper sheds new light on the effects of HSR on social welfare in the case of sustainable economy.

50 Years of Capital Mobility in the Eurozone: Breaking the Feldstein-Horioka Puzzle

This paper assesses capital mobility for the Eurozone countries by studying the long-run relationship between domestic investment and savings for the period 1970-2019. Our main goal is to analyze the impact of economic events on capital mobility during this period. We apply the cointegration methodology in a setting that allows us to identify endogenous breaks in the long-run saving-investment relationship. Precisely, the breaks coincide with relevant economic events. We find a downward trend in the saving-investment retention since the 70s for the so-called “core countries”, whereas this trend is not so evident in the peripheral, where the financial and sovereign crises have had a more substantial impact. In addition, our analysis captures other economic events: the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) crisis, the German reunification, the European financial assistance program, and the post-crisis period. Our results also indicate that the original euro design had some flaws that remain unsolved.

After a Global Platform Leaves: Understanding the Heterogeneity of Gig Workers through Capital Mobility

We know a great deal about global capital mobility in traditional industries, such as manufacturing, but very little about emerging capital mobility in the gig economy. Using the case of Canadian Foodora, a multinational platform that left Canada in 2020, I situate global capital mobility in the local labour market. Drawing upon interview data with former Foodora couriers and ethnographic data collected from a gig workers’ union, I investigate the social, economic and political subjectivities of gig workers activated by a global platform’s capital mobility. My findings reveal unexpected parallel effects caused by capital mobility in the gig economy and traditional industries. My research highlights how heterogeneity is salient for understanding divergent worker subjectivities. The economic and social impacts upon financially dependent gig workers and the emotional connections of devoted and organized gig workers challenge the dominant discourse that gig workers are simply part-timers and hence free from work commitments.

Conclusion

This chapter reiterates the key arguments and findings of the book. The British state pursued financial liberalization in the 1970s and 1980s in an attempt to reconcile the demands of domestic civil society with the suffocating, impersonal pressures of the global economic crisis on Britain’s balances with the rest of the world. Financialization was an accidental result, not an intended outcome. In addition, this chapter explores how the four liberalizations examined here impacted upon the trajectory of financialization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Britain’s liberalization of its financial sector boosted global capital mobility, and thus created powerful pressures on other states to follow suit, contributing to a dynamic of competitive deregulation that spread around the world. Further, the arm’s-length, depoliticized design of the 1986 FSA generated an institutional path dependency, whereby future British systems of financial governance would take a similarly light-touch form. This meant that London would incubate a series of banking scandals in the 1990s, as well as being home to some of the riskiest financial practices exposed by the 2008 crisis. Finally, the growing financial flows unleashed by the liberalizations of the 1970s and 1980s were increasingly channelled into the housing market, resulting in Britain’s particular dynamic of housing-centric financialization.

International Liquidity Channel and Performance of Commercial Banks in Nigeria

This study examined the effect of international liquidity channels on the profitability of quoted commercial banks in Nigeria. The objective was to examine the direction which international liquidity channel affects commercial banks profitability. Return on equity was used as dependent variable while Monetary policy channels proxy by percentage of net foreign assets, financial market channel proxy by percentage of net foreign portfolio investment, international trade channel proxy by percentage of Nigeria terms of trade, capital mobility channel proxy by net foreign direct investment and currency channel proxy by variation of Nigeria naira to US dollar. Panel data of return on equity were sourced from financial reports of the commercial banks while international liquidity variables were sourced from Central banks of Nigeria statistical bulletin. Ordinary least square methods were used as data analysis methods. The study found that 50.3 percent of the variation in return on equity of the commercial banks is explained by the variables in the equation. Monetary policy channel, international trade channel and currency have negative effect on return on equity while financial market channel and capital mobility channel has positive and no significant effect on return on equity of the commercial banks. The study recommends that Central Bank of Nigeria should adopt an appropriate macro prudential framework to enable Nigeria banks become internationally active in terms of liquidity and solvency. The depreciating naira exchange rate should be integrated to the monetary and the macroeconomic policies to avert its negative effect on the economy and the banking industry. The regulatory authorities and the bank management should formulate policies to manage international monetary shocks, the international financial environment and global financial crises to enhance Nigerian banking system soundness.

The Ethics of Global Capital Mobility

Global capital mobility is a crucial determinant of economic, political, and social life. While much has been written about the ethics of human movement, political theory has remained nearly silent on the ethics of capital movement. In this article, we intend to develop a general account of the ethics of global capital mobility—identifying both the forms of mobility that merit protection and those that merit restriction. By integrating normative theorizing with an economic analysis of global investment, we argue that the movement of capital, with important exceptions, should be much more restricted than it is today. We make the case, on both grounds of global justice and international assistance, for imposing coercive limits on cross-border inflows and outflows of capital. To enable them, we also propose a radical reform of the international monetary system—a new global currency—that would simultaneously facilitate beneficial capital movements.