The financialisation of local governments: Evidence from the Italian case

The financialisation of local governments: Evidence from the Italian cas

Derivatives and the financialisation of the Italian state

© 2015 Taylor & Francis.The existing literature on financialisation has devoted insufficient attention to how governments wield the market-based practices and technologies of financial innovation to pursue statecraft objectives. Because of this inattention, scholars have missed the opportunity to examine a crucial facet of the financialisation of the state. To remedy this limitation, the present article investigates how and why the Italian government designed derivatives-based strategies during the 1993–9 period. It argues that these tactics gained momentum in the context of the political struggles that developed in Italy beginning in the late 1980s. In particular, the study shows how a neoliberal-reformist alliance came to power and used financial innovation to comply with the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) admission criteria. EMU dynamics enhanced the power position of the neoliberal-reformist coalition vis-à-vis the country's traditional political and business establishment. This work offers insights that go beyond the specificities of the Italian case. It encourages further research on how governments in other countries simultaneously exposed state institutions to financial speculation and gained access to a range of new instruments through which they could manage state affairs in a financialised manner

Derivatives as weapons of mass deception and elite contestation: the case of FIAT

Derivatives as weapons of mass deception and elite contestation: the case of FIA

Italian municipalities and the politics of financial derivatives: rethinking the Foucauldian perspective

© The Author(s) 2015.This study examines the use of interest rate swaps by Italian municipalities during the 2000-2014 period. Through a constructive critique of Foucauldian political economy, it argues that local administrators did not enter the swaps market to perform and depoliticize the disciplinary power of financialized discourses. The evidence suggests many more layers of historical complexity underlie the municipalities' actions than a Foucauldian approach can grasp. Local governments used swaps to circumvent the budget constraints imposed by the European Stability and Growth Pact. In this sense, municipalities acted more for political-strategic than for performative and depoliticized purposes. Rethinking the dimensions of performativity and disciplinary power - through an approach that is more sensitive than Foucauldian analysis to historical agency and asymmetrical power relations - is crucial to address the differential and politically shaped contours of financialization across the globe

Statecraft strategies and housing financialization at the periphery: Post-socialist trajectories in Russia and Poland

A new literature on housing and financialization has emerged in recent years, but scholars have yet to examine how political actors shape national trajectories of housing financialization. In this article, we address this shortcoming by examining the cases of Russia and Poland in the 1990-2018 period. We argue that in both contexts political elites implemented a radical market-oriented reshaping of housing finance. However, by pursuing distinct statecraft strategies and modes of integrating the domestic economy into global markets, Russian and Polish political elites created two divergent trajectories of housing financialization. Russian political elites pursued patrimonial statecraft strategies and a mode of global economic integration based on raw material exports. The Putin administration channeled revenues from raw material exports into the securitization-based housing finance system and used this infrastructure as an instrument of hegemonic power. In doing so, the Russian government shielded homeowners from exposure to financial risk. In contrast, Polish political elites pursued liberal statecraft strategies and a mode of global economic integration based on foreign capital inflows. Polish political parties therefore enabled foreign banks to dominate the housing finance system and sell foreign currency mortgages, which exposed homeowners to considerable financial risk. In light of these findings we call for further research into the political factors that shape the process of housing financialization, both in the post-socialist space and beyond

Making the world a better place with fintech research

Financial technology (fintech) is seen as possessing significant potential to provide the poor access to financial services and help them escape the clutches of poverty. Surprisingly, Information Systems (IS) research has engaged little with fintech’s promise of fostering financial inclusion for the poor. In the spirit of ‘making a better world with ICTs’ (Walsham, 2012), conducting ‘responsible IS research’ (ISJ, 2019b) and ‘tackling societal grand challenges through management research’ (George et al., 2016), we advance a framework for guiding IS research on fintech-led financial inclusion. Drawing on the IS literature and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) scholarship, we extrapolate five areas of research that can better illuminate fintech’s contributions to financial inclusion: (1) business strategies for fintech-led financial inclusion; (2) digital artifacts of fintech-led financial inclusion; (3) business environment of fintech-led financial inclusion; (4) microfoundations of fintech for financial inclusion; (5) developmental impacts of fintech. We conclude with a discussion of how the five areas offer opportunities for impactful research on fintech and the promise of building a financially inclusive society

The dark side of liquidity: Shedding light on dark pools' marketing and market making

In this article, we explore the case of dark pools of liquidity, which are trading venues that do not display order books and other trading-related data. We argue that, in a context where liquidity remains essentially invisible, dark-pool providers use visual advertisements that iconically represent liquid markets. In so doing, they defuse the idea that dark liquidity is harmful to market efficiency and fair pricing. We use Barthesian and Greimasian semiotics to study how a major bank advertised its dark-liquidity services through iconic visual signs. We contribute to economic sociology and social studies of finance by foregrounding the role of visual advertising in the construction of liquid markets. To do so, we draw on insights from market studies and visual culture