Time: 13:00-15:00 (UK Time), Wednesday, 14 June 2023
Presenter: Professor Antonio Andreoni, SOAS University of London
Chair: Professor Victor Murinde, SOAS University of London
Online Venue: Click here to join the seminar on Microsoft Teams (For any inquiry about how to join the online seminar, please contact Dr. Athina Petropoulou: ap102@soas.ac.uk)
Abstract
Financialisation shapes the ways in which middle-income countries and their non-financial corporations integrate into global supply chains and the global financial system. This integration in turn shapes the ways in which these corporations engage with financialisation. To unpack these dynamics, we advance an integrated analytical framework to explore specific sources and processes of financialisation that emerge and operate across micro, meso and macro levels. First, we adopt different concepts of rents to unpack variegated sources of financialisation related to the firm’s investment and financial activities, their value chain position, market structure, and political economy contexts. Second, we articulate financialisation processes specific to the middle-income country context through which rents are extracted. We apply our framework to three case studies of non-financial corporations in South Africa, a middle-income country undergoing premature deindustrialisation and financialisation. The selected corporations operate in different sectors and occupy different positions within their respective supply chains: Sasol in chemicals, Shoprite in retail, and MTN in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services. Our integrated framework reveals highly heterogeneous sources and processes of financialisation which intersect at the three different levels.
Keywords: Financialisation; Non-Financial Corporations; Value Chains; Sources; Processes; Rents; Middle-income countries; South Africa.
JEL classification: D40, D20, F30, G30, L10.
Co-authors: Dr Nishal Robb, University of Johannesburg and Dr Sophie van Huellen, University of Manchester
Antonio Andreoni is Professor of Development Economics at the Department of Economics of SOAS University of London. He is also Visiting Professor at the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development, University of Johannesburg, Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London and Fellow of the DG GROW of the European Commission. He has published extensively on technological change and digitalisation, structural transformation and energy transition, institutional change and political economy of development, financialisation and corporate governance, industrial policy and competition policy. His research was published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Technovation, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Development and Change, Energy Policy, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society. His latest books include Structural Transformation in South Africa (Oxford University Press, 2021) and From Financialisation to Innovation in UK Big Pharma (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Antonio is a co-Editor of the European Journal of Development Research. For over a decade Antonio advised several multilateral organisations – UNIDO, UNCTAD, ILO, UNDP, World Bank, OECD – and national governments in industrial policymaking, including South Africa, Chile, Mauritius, Tanzania and Uganda.