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La reconfiguration actuelle du système financier suisse: quelles articulations avec l'économie réelle et les régions?
Titre du projet
La reconfiguration actuelle du système financier suisse: quelles articulations avec l'économie réelle et les régions?
Description
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.
Chercheur principal
Statut
Completed
Date de début
1 Septembre 2011
Date de fin
30 Septembre 2016
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Identifiant interne
15017
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5 Résultats
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- PublicationMétadonnées seulementFinance de marché et fonds d’investissement durables : la coupure au territoire(2017-9-30)
; ; Cet article s’inscrit en géographie de la finance et montre, à l’aide de diverses études de cas, comment l’industrie financière, en s’appropriant le concept de développement durable de manière particulière, a construit sa propre approche de la « valeur financière durable » dans le cadre des fonds d’investissement socialement responsable (ISR). Il explique la manière dont l’industrie financière auto-valide son action en matière de finance « durable » par le recours à des organisations (agences de notation extra-financière et ONGs), des personnalités (experts, leaders d’opinion) ou des institutions (organisations internationales) qui, par leur réputation ou leur position, légitiment la « valeur durable ». Or, si ces acteurs parviennent à animer le débat médiatique, scientifique et politique, ils restent largement sous l’influence de l’industrie financière et ne remettent pas en cause l’essence même des produits financiers, la coupure au territoire. L’absence de territorialisation et de contextualisation territoriale empêchent toute approche forte de la durabilité, fondée sur les acteurs locaux et une opérationnalisation sur un territoire donné. - PublicationMétadonnées seulementEmergent models of financial intermediation for innovative companies: from venture capital to crowdinvesting platforms in Switzerland(2016-1-1)The recent financial crisis has accelerated the changes with regard to the spatial organization of financial channels. In direct investments, the venture capital industry in Switzerland used to be connected to national and international financial markets. Today, these traditional direct investment players are in decline because their traditional business model is no longer suited to the current economic environment. Instead, a new business model for direct investment has recently emerged at the same time revitalizing this financial sector: crowdinvesting platforms exploit more intensively the possibilities opened by Information and Communication technologies and of specialized, but dispersed, expertise. This article highlights the strengths and weaknesses of both business models as well as their contrasted time and space ways to deal with uncertainty.
- PublicationMétadonnées seulementThe Post Crisis Transition: towards new investment circuits ?The recent Global financial crisis has marked an unprecedented separation between finance and real economy. This paper deals with the question of today’s transition within finance geography. It focuses on the transition process of the Swiss financial system after 2008 from institutional and territorial perspective. More specifically, this study investigates new investment circuits in Switzerland and attempts to understand to which extent they are connected to entrepreneurial activities at local and regional levels. Our main findings highlight that the Swiss case shows two opposite movements: “from the top”, i.e. Swiss pension fund sector and “from below”, i.e. regional private entrepreneurial investors. We will finally demonstrate that, because of the specific institutional framework, the current transition process in Switzerland is more likely to be driven by small regional actors, rather than by large institutional investors.
- PublicationMétadonnées seulementStrategies of startup evaluation on crowdinvesting platforms : the case of Switzerland(2018-2-15)Financing for innovative, young ventures has seen major developments in recent years.The slowdown of the venture capital industry has been accompanied by rapidly-growing crowdinvesting platforms, which bring together startup creators and private, often unsophisticated, investors. While these new forms of financial intermediation facilitate, and can even democratize, startup financing, they raise important questions about value assessment and the decision to invest. Through two case studies of crowdinvesting platforms in Switzerland, this paper investigates evaluation strategies which take advantage of sociotechnical devices implemented on these platforms. The findings suggest that the evaluation process of investment proposals is highly dependent on ‘social proof’ dynamics that operate within the platform’s community and the startup ecosystem. The ‘calculative space’ reflects an interplay between substantive (owned) and significant (shared) knowledge, based on both established rules and mechanisms that are driven by the opinion, status or reputation of startup creators and community investors
- PublicationMétadonnées seulementIndustrie de fonds ISR et la construction de la "valeur financière durable"(Neuchâtel Université de Neuchâtel Institut de sociologie, 2015)
; ; Avec son offre de fonds d’Investissement socialement responsable (ISR), l’industrie de la finance s’inscrit dans le mouvement général de «Développement durable». Toutefois, malgré la mise en place de dispositifs sociotechniques complexes pour évaluer la « responsabilité » des entreprises, la finance « durable » se heurte à de nombreuses limites. D’une part, la finance et le DD sont mus par des logiques, des principes d’action et les spatialités complètement différents. D’autre part, seule une validation sociale de la «valeur durable» provenant des milieux non financiers serait à même d’évaluer la durabilité des activités économiques.