La reconfiguration actuelle du système financier suisse: quelles articulations avec l'économie réelle et les régions?
| Responsable du projet | Olivier Crevoisier |
| Collaborateur | Victoriya Salomon |
| Résumé |
The current reshaping of the Swiss financial system : what
connections with the real economy and the regions? The current
crisis, being originally only a financial crisis and concerning one
sector and one country (the American mortgage loans), that has
gradually extended to the global economy poses the question of the
relationship between the financial and real spheres of the economy.
For more than fifteen years, the autonomy process of the financial
sphere and its impacts on the real economy has been largely studied
by heterodox economists (from the Regulation School, from the
Conventions School or from the institutional approach). For these
authors, the current crisis of the finance-led accumulation regime
means the end of a period which has begun in the eighties and which
is characterized by a market-based financial system and its
management criteria in the economic system and more broadly in the
society. According to this approach, we are living a period
consisting in a major reshaping of institutions, especially of
those of the monetary and financial system. A second research
approach deals with the geography of financial activities and of
the finance-led accumulation regime, and as well with its impacts
on the real economy (see Engelen and al., 2010; Pike and Pollard,
2010). For these authors, the current financial system can be
characterized by an intense capital mobility which has replaced
traditional dynamics based on a capital accumulation depending on
time and made at regional and national scales. The financial
industry can be described as a system which constructs and utilizes
the hypermobility of capital. Moreover, the corporate governance
appears like the institutional device which allows the anchoring of
capital in the real economy, through big quoted firms. The study
deals with the Swiss financial system and its relationships with
the real economy. It postulates that the current financial crisis
has been the trigger meaning the limits of “the finance-led
accumulation regime” (Boyer, 2009), and consequently it involves
some financial innovation initiatives with the aim to reshape
circuits from the collect of funds to investment. Consequently, the
main research question is the following one: what are the financial
innovations that are developping in Switzerland and to what extent
they are meaning the emergence of (new) relationships between
savings and real investments?. These innovations come from the
financial sector that is searching to recreate some confidence as
well as to develop a new ethics-based rationale of the role of
market finance. (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999 ; Dembinski, 2008).
Innovations come also from some investors, such as pension funds,
which are looking for stable and long term returns. Finally, some
quoted firms are having difficulties in capital leverage through
financial markets and are looking for other means of profits
sources. Using mainly some works of the institutionalist economy
and of the geography of finance, the theorical framework of this
research is based on the institutionalist and territorial approach
of the financial industry (Corpataux et al., 2009; Theurillat et
al., 2008). It deals with financial innovations, i.e. with any kind
of new circuit linking savings and investments, which seem to
characterize the current period. The aim of this study is to
identify the object of innovation (what is the nature of the
economic activity through which kind of financial institutions or
special purpose vehicule as well as which kind of products: for
instance, dark pools, regional funds, “green” funds, new direct
investments, “sustainable” private equity, etc.), the stakeholders
and the institutions on which depend their relations as well as the
spatial (for instance the modalities of capital mobility between
different places) and temporal aspects (for instance the time frame
of the investment). Moreover, this will consist in emphasizing the
rationale of actors towards financial innovations in terms of
practise as well as of arguments. In this way, we will be able to
analyze to what extent the relationships between the financial and
real sphere of the economy are being reshaped. Concerning the
research methodology, we adopt a qualitative approach for our
exploratory study. More precisely, it consists in a case study of
15 financial innovations within the Swiss financial system and it
mainly uses qualitative tools for collecting data. These data will
come from semi-structured interviews with, on the one hand, actors
involved in financial innovations, and on the other, with four
groups of “instituted” actors belonging to the various fields in
the financial sector, firms, investors as well as other key actors
of the financial regulation. A task group, composed of actors
coming from the same four groups, will also be created to supervise
the research. Through these interviews (individuals or group), we
will be able to place the financial innovations in their
institutional setting and in the more overall evolution of the
financial industry (financial circuits composed of investors,
investments and intermediates). The data collection will be
completed by a documentary analysis (reports and publications of
banks and “instituted” actors, documents concerning the legal
framework of the financial system) as well as by a secondary
analyses of statistical data in order to measure the importance of
financial innovations and of the evolution of the Swiss financial
system. This exploratory study on emergent rationales (pratices and
arguments) is a relevant way, and to our knowledge original, to
situate, institutionally and territorially, the new reshaping of
circuits linking savings and investments after the financial
crisis. In picking out the setting up of institutions which could
play a major role in the next years, this research will contribute
to give new reflections both on the scientific level (geography of
finance) and on the social and political level. |
| Mots-clés |
Financial system, Financial innovation, Institutions, Territory, Swiss Economy, Sustainable development |
| Type de projet | Recherche fondamentale |
| Domaine de recherche | Géographie humaine et économique, écologie humaine |
| Source de financement | FNS - Encouragement de projets (Div. I-III) |
| Etat | Terminé |
| Début de projet | 1-9-2011 |
| Fin du projet | 30-9-2016 |
| Budget alloué | 260'495.00 |
| Autre information |
http://p3.snf.ch/projects-134606# |
| Contact | Olivier Crevoisier |