Recently there has been a great deal of research generated focusing on the Financialization-Approach. However, most of the literature on financialization emphasizes the influence of the financial sector, and pays less attention to the real economy. This paper examines how to bring the dynamism of real economy into the Financialization- Approach. Firstly, I investigate the relationship between corporations and finance, focusing on the literature of corporate governance. According to the research by Lazonick and O'Sullivan, the management strategy of U.S. corporations changed from "retain and reinvest" to "downsize and distribute" after the 1980s. U.S. corporations reduced their employment, and distributed cash to stockholders, and increased dividend payments and stock repurchases to raise their stock prices. This change arose from the formation of the "market for corporate control", which is explained mainly from the following: 1) Worsening performance of corporations and agency theory, 2) Increase of the stock holding by institutional investors, and 3) Development of junk bond market. However, this change is explained only from the influence of finance. The activeness of corporations is ignored. Secondly, I investigate the situation that U.S. corporations faced in 1980s to focus on the corporate action. They faced the shift in industrial structure. Key industries, such as steel, automobile and household electronic appliances, lost competitive power, while high-technology, energy and service industries maintained competitive power. Many corporations restructured their business formations to adapt to this shift by mergers and acquisitions. While raising stock prices is a result of financial influence in the literature of financialization, raising stock prices has a positive meaning for companies which perform mergers and acquisitions. Companies can perform mergers and acquisitions advantageously when their stock prices are high. Increase of dividend payments and stock repurchases can be understood to be a result of corporate action which adapts to the shift in industrial structure by mergers and acquisitions. Finally, I discuss the corporate image which should be included in the Financialization-Approach. The corporation should be assumed the active one which pursues profits, not the passive one assumed in the former literature. This is the starting point of an attempt to bring the dynamism of real economy into the Financialization-Approach.

抄録全体を表示