Dynamics Of Capital Accumulation Research Articles

Constituting financialized subjectivities: cultural political economy of financial literacy in Turkey

ABSTRACTFinancial literacy is defined as the knowledge, skills, and ability to navigate increasingly complex financial markets, and is considered to empower consumers to make responsible financial decisions. It has been widely promoted as a crucial life skill following the 2008 financial crisis. This study critically analyzes financial literacy education initiatives in Turkey through ethnographic research. Financial literacy curricula provide the basic knowledge of finance as well as instruct subjects ways to conduct financial planning, budgeting, debt management, creditworthiness, saving, and investment. Financial literacy agenda deepens neo-liberal governmentality by promoting an entrepreneurial subjectivity and making individuals more aware and responsible for social risks. The cultural political economy perspective of this study analyzes financialized capital accumulation dynamics together with the reshaping of culture and the constitution of financialized subjectivities.

La institucionalización de la “cuestión” indígena desde el Estado costarricense

La denominada cuestión indígena ha sido objeto de múltiples abordajes en las últimas décadas, particularmente desde los enfoques de Estudios Culturales en el ámbito de las Ciencias Sociales y desde las perspectivas de estudios socioeconómicos sobre la temática de pobreza. El presente artículo propone un acercamiento crítico de esta noción, intentando relevar las estrategias epistemológicas que cosifican la subjetividad indígena y la deshistorizan de sus condiciones económicas y sociales a partir del relacionamiento contradictorio con el Estado y las dinámicas de acumulación de capital en que se encuentra circunscrito. Dar cuenta del marco contextual en el cual se reproduce la lógica de exclusión y explotación de los pueblos indígenas en Costa Rica es el eje sustancial de este estudio.

The Acceleration of Privatization: Understanding State, Power Bloc, and Capital Accumulation in Turkey

This article seeks to explain the post-2001 acceleration of privatization in Turkey. Employing a Marxian analytical framework, the article argues that the acceleration of privatization in Turkey in the post-2001 period was the result of a powerful combination of support from the power bloc (i.e., fractions of capital) in Turkey, which has been achieved with a major subordination of labor. The power bloc saw previously unavailable advantages in supporting privatization within the context of the post-2001 domestic capital accumulation regime, and therefore acted to restructure the legal and institutional framework of the state to weaken the resistance of labor and facilitate the participation of potential investors in privatization tenders. This interpretation challenges the dominance of institutionalist accounts, which draw on the legal-institutional framework and/or national interest-based discourses without considering how the changing relations among different fractions of capital and between capital and labor within the constitutive dynamics of domestic capital accumulation exerted significant influence on the acceleration of privatization. JEL Classification: P160; F50

Capital Accumulation, Asset Price Dynamics and the Macroeconomy

This article develops a dependent economy model of determination of employment and asset prices that integrates the roles of relative prices, expectations and dynamics of capital accumulation. In this model, money wage is rigid which leads to persistence of unemployment. Labour and capital are used as factors of production in the traded sector while the non-traded sector uses labour and imported intermediate inputs. The article examines macroeconomic implications of selective economic reforms for asset price dynamics, growth and employment. The discussion of comparative static exercises shows that not only the effects of different policies are ambiguous but also the short-run and the long-run effects are qualitatively different. For example, tariff liberalization causes the short-run expansions of both traded and non-traded sectors but overtime it may depress the capital stock leading to contraction of both the sectors and an increase in unemployment. The broad message of this article is that the design of macroeconomic policy should not be purely based on considerations of the short-run effects of policy changes. JEL: E22, F13, F41

Um museu de grandes novidades: capital fictício, fundo público e a economia política da catástrofe

This article affirms the urgency of overcoming the common sense that interprets new phenomena from anachronistic analyzes. Marx's notion of fictitious capital is recovered and its predominant role in the current dynamics of capital accumulation is affirmed. Through the fictionalization of wealth, potential future wealth is anticipated as current wealth. This produces a new relationship of the present with the future. The catastrophic effects that this logic will produce in the future end up internalizing as the basis of the production of wealth itself. From this, the idea of a political economy of catastrophe is formulated. Considering the participation of the fictionalization of wealth in the formation of the public fund, we question the frequent understanding that interprets the public fund as exclusively formed by surplus value previously produced and appropriated by the State. Finally, some considerations about the horizon of social struggles are drawn from an understanding of these profound new developments that capitalism is currently presenting, which is here freely considered a museum, that tries at the same time to maintain a fixed and increasingly anachronistic form.

A Growth Theory Based on Walrasian General Equilibrium, Solow-Uzawa Growth, and Heckscher-Ohlin Trade Theories

The purpose of this study is to analyse the role of preferences and technological differences between countries in determining dynamics of capital accumulation, wealth and income distribution within countries and between countries, and patterns of trade in a dynamic general equilibrium framework. The model is built by integrating Walrasian general equilibrium, neoclassical growth, and H O international trade theories. The model is built for any number of countries and each country is composed of three production sectors and heterogeneous households. The national growth mechanism is the same as that in neoclassical growth theory. Labour and capital distributions among sectors and among countries are determined under perfect competition and free trade. The model synthesizes the well-known H O and the Oniki-Uzawa trade models, Solow-Uzawa neoclassical growth theory, and Walrasian general equilibrium theory with Zhang's utility function. We simulated the model with three national economies and with two groups of households for each country. We identified the existence of equilibrium points and plot motion of the dynamic system. We also conducted a comparative dynamic analysis.

Actores económicos y medios de comunicación. El golpe parlamentario a Fernando Lugo (2012)

El golpe de Estado parlamentario consumado en Paraguay al presidente constitucional Fernando Lugo, en junio de 2012, puso en escena el rol la prensa paraguaya como actor protagónico en los nuevos formatos destituyentes en la región, mostrando su capacidad para coagular un discurso en torno a los sentidos que venían a justificar el juicio parlamentario. Este trabajo parte de la hipótesis de que la prensa hegemónica, perteneciente a una burguesía local altamente diversificada, con el fin de abrir un ciclo de reestructuración de la economía nacional vinculada a la nueva dinámica global de acumulación del capital proveyó de una narrativa de la crisis y construyó las representaciones e ideología para legitimar el juicio político.

Constructing a New Asset Class: Property-led Financial Accumulation after the Crisis

abstractThis article is concerned with new modes of property-led financial accumulation emerging in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Focusing on the United States, the article traces the creation of an asset class derived from securitizing the rental income of foreclosed homes turned rental properties. The study strategically combines conceptual agendas often pursued separately. Theories of market formation rooted in science and technology studies inform the method of analysis so as to attend to the work of realizing markets, the role of calculative devices in market formation, and the contingent and conditional aspects of markets. This analysis reveals the single-family rental (SFR) asset class as a practical accomplishment. However, a broader framework rooted in political economy is necessary to attend to the broader significance of the SFR asset class in terms of power, politics, and the dynamics of capital accumulation. The article particularly focuses upon the historical and geographic contingencies making it possible to conceive of a large-scale SFR market, the work of state and capital market actors in reframing repossessed single-family homes as rental properties and the role calculative practices played in this process, and the strategies of issuers and credit rating agencies to frame a novel asset class for institutional investors. The SFR asset class affirms the fundamental role for housing in the ideology of capital, and speaks to new entanglements of financial actors and home life as financial accumulation is adjusted to the postcrisis context. Beyond shedding light on postcrisis housing financialization, the article demonstrates how economic geographers can carefully integrate theoretical perspectives to critically examine both the circumstances of market formation and the social, spatial, and political consequences of markets.

Underdevelopment in contemporary world:is structuralism still relevant?

ABSTRACT This paper intends to evaluate if the Latin American structuralist approach is still relevant to understand capital accumulation dynamics of peripheral countries and their insertion in the global value chains. It’s a theoretical paper that strives to improve the building blocks of structuralism with the incorporation of elements from different approaches to establish a nexus to understand capital accumulation dynamics in the periphery. Considering the relevance of technological accumulation, its impacts over the productive structure and over the international insertion, we strive to analyze factors that perpetuate income diversion in relation to the center. Under this perspective, we conclude that the particularities of peripheral economies changed their form of manifestation without effectively overcome the dependence relation.

Flying bananas: small producer tactics and the (un)making of Philippine banana export chains

Global production network (GPN) analysts argue that workers actively contribute to the shaping of GPNs through different forms of agency. In this contribution I extend this argument to the tactical agency of small producers. By focusing on the phenomenon of side-selling among Filipino banana contract farmers, I show that these tactics have contributed to the emergence of alternative trade networks that undermined traditional lead firm behaviour and inspired new struggles over chain governance. However, as a diverse and ambiguous group of growers engages in this tactical agency, predominantly as small capital, they also contribute to the continuation of broader dynamics of capital accumulation and labour exploitation.

DISTORSIONES Y DESEQUILIBRIOS EN LA DINÁMICA DE ACUMULACIÓN DE LA ECONOMÍA EN ESPAÑA

This paper explores the sectoral distortions in Spain's capital accumulation dynamics between 1999 and 2014 from a political economy standpoint. Investment has been driven in large part by the revaluation of construction-related assets, which has profoundly reshaped the economic structure. As such, it is necessary to conduct a study disaggregated by asset and sector. The crux of the matter is capital composition: the most dynamic sectors display a relatively low technical capital composition, giving rise to an absolute reduction in labor productivity, as well as a price effect that has completely distorted reproduction over time in the Spanish economy.

Labour Market Failure, Capital Accumulation, Growth and Poverty Dynamics in Partially Formalised Economies: Why Developing Countriess Growth Patterns are Different

The assumption of perfectly functioning labour markets is ubiquitous in growth theory, yet incompatible with equally ubiquitous poverty in developing countries’ informal sectors. We argue that developing countries and high-income countries differ as in the former, induced by informal sector poverty, the macroeconomic labour market fails with the result of a persisting wage differential between the well-observed formal and the unobserved informal sector. In such setting, formal sector employment growth is driven by formal sector capital accumulation, formal sector capital accumulation is free from diminishing returns and growth is endogenous. These propositions hold as long as informal sector poverty exists. Empirical testing using panel data and cross-sectional data from a stable sample of 73 developing countries provides strong support for these findings.

The dynamics of leverage in a demand-driven model with heterogeneous firms

This paper introduces heterogeneous microeconomic behavior into a demand-driven macroeconomic model in order to study the joint dynamics of leverage and capital accumulation. By identifying the links between firm level variables and aggregate quantities, the paper contributes toward a reformulation of the Minskyan formal analysis that explicitly considers the role of microeconomic factors in generating macroeconomic instability. The aggregation of heterogeneous agents is not only performed numerically, as in traditional agent-based models, but also by means of an innovative analytical methodology, originally developed in statistical mechanics and recently imported into macroeconomics. The distinctive feature is in that the joint analysis of the numerical and analytical solutions of the model sheds light on the effects of financial fragility at the firm level on the dynamics of the macroeconomy. In particular, the analysis of steady-state and stability properties of the system provide additional insights on the role of behavioral and size heterogeneity of firms for the stocks of aggregate debt and capital.

The dynamics of capital accumulation in the US: simulations after piketty

We develop a dynamic model where a competitive firm uses labor and capital, with market clearing rates of return. Individuals are heterogeneous in skills, with an endowment in capital/wealth increasing in skill. Individuals aspire to a socially determined consumption level, with a constant marginal propensity to consume out of income above this level. We also study three variants of the model: one with a higher rate of return for large capitals than for smaller ones, one with a capital levy financing a lump sum transfer, and one with social mobility. We calibrate the model to the US economy and obtain that a steady state exists in all variants, and we obtain convergence to the steady state from the 2012 US wealth distribution. The reduction in the level of the aspirational consumption level is the only way to create wealth for the bottom half of the distribution.

The Dynamics of Capital Accumulation in the US: Simulations after Piketty

We calibrate a sequence of four nested models to study the dynamics of wealth accumulation. Individuals maximize a utility function whose arguments are consumption and investment. They desire to accumulate wealth for its own sake – this is not a life-cycle model. A competitive firm produces a single good from labor and capital; the rate of return to capital and the wage rate are market-clearing. The second model introduces political lobbying by the wealthy, whose purpose is to reduce the tax rate on capital income. The third model introduces differential rates of return to capitals of different sizes. The fourth model introduces inheritance and intergenerational mobility.

Neither Equilibrium as Such nor as Abstraction: Debating Fred Moseley’s Transformation1

Fred Moseley’s interpretation of Marx’s Capital (focusing on the transformation of values into prices of production) is taken as a critical point of departure, especially for its treatment as an analysis of equilibrium. Instead, through extensive reference to previous work, a dynamic interpretation is offered of the transformation, locating it in relation to abstraction in Marx’s political economy (and its antipathy to equilibrium) and to Marx’s theory of the dynamics of capital accumulation as presented throughout the three Volumes of Capital.

From Occupying Plazas to Recuperating Housing: Insurgent Practices in Spain

AbstractUrban insurgencies have spread across the globe like wildfire in recent years. The indignado plaza occupations in Spain are often cited as beacons of popular and widespread dissent. This article argues that urban insurgencies with the highest emancipatory potential in Spain today are found in the practices of the housing rights movement—the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH, or Platform for Mortgage‐affected People)—that mainly entail blocking evictions and occupying empty bank‐owned housing. I elaborate on the notion of insurgent practice by examining how insurgency has been considered in relationship to citizenship, planning and public space. I propose insurgent practice as a way of articulating how people attempt to enact equality in everyday life and engage explicitly with socio‐spatial and political questions related to an emancipatory democratic politics. Based on a detailed analysis of two of the PAH's insurgent housing practices, I posit that recuperating empty bank‐owned housing with and for evicted families has the highest and most significant emancipatory potential, as it disrupts the core dynamics of urban capital accumulation and enacts equality for evicted households by directly contesting financial rent‐extraction mechanisms at multiple levels. In closing, I outline some conclusions that emerge from the Spanish housing case and from the concept of insurgent practice and urban politicizing practice in general.

Governing Academics: The Historical Transformation from Discipline to Control

Given the transformation in the government of academic life over recent decades, the article attempts to derive a political critique of the changing psychosocial conditions of academic life via a historical juxtaposition with the nomos of the labour camp in Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. The aim is to address the need to think beyond normative disciplinary power, to explore a distinctly capitalist governmentality in relation to Foucault’s genealogy of power and to elaborate the techniques and practices of an emergent ‘meta-disciplinary’ technology of labour control in academia. Therefore, a broadly Foucauldian analysis on these questions will be undertaken, and augmented with Marxian and post-Freudian insights into the role of capital accumulation dynamics, in order to texture the conventional presentation of governmental rationality. The result is a metonymic presentation of the ‘camp’ as a physiological structure of capitalist Modernity, whose imprint can be discerned in numerous social and institutional settings, in this case Academia and the Gulag. From this outcome, insights into the transformation of living and labouring in academia, and the effects on psychological and intellectual well-being stemming from the new complex of control can be derived. The piece concludes with some thoughts on strategies of intellectual survival in academia, on counter-conducted techniques of subjectification and on possible means of resistance in the meta-disciplinary idiom.

Nature of the state economic expanded functions in the Brazilian economy*

ABSTRACT The paper discusses the dynamics of capital accumulation in Latin America economies. The hypothesis is that in these economies the role of the State is comparatively broader than in the economies of the centers of the capitalism by structural reasons. The argument is mainly based on Marx and Kalecki, besides historical elements of Latin America economies, particularly the Brazilian economy. Then the paper explores the dynamics consequences of this nature at the national levels, concluding that this condition gives a higher degree of instability.

Long-term care and capital accumulation: the impact of the State, the market and the family

The rising level of long-term care (LTC) expenditures and their financing sources are likely to impact savings and capital accumulation and henceforth the pattern of growth. This paper studies how the joint interaction of the family, the market and the State influences capital accumulation and welfare in a society in which the assistance the children give to dependent parents is triggered by a family norm. We find that with a family norm in place, the dynamics of capital accumulation differ from those of a standard Diamond (Am Econ Rev 55:1126–1150, 1965) model with dependence. For instance, if the family help is sizeably more productive than other LTC financing sources, pay-as-you-go social insurance might be a complement to private insurance and foster capital accumulation.