Raghuram Rajan

Luigi Zingales

Raghuram Govind Rajan

What is the secret of prosperity? Why are the rich rich and the poor poor? The answer lies in the structure of financial markets and the willingness to allow the capitalist system to let creative destruction work its wealth-creating wonders.

Unleashing the Power of Financial Markets to Create Wealth and Spread Opportunity

Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists

recapturing the lost genius of American prosperity

A capitalism for the people

Um capitalismo para o povo

When the Italian-born economist Luigi Zingales came to the United States in the 1980s, he embraced the American Dream: the belief that what brings you success is hard work, not luck or who you know. But the economic events of the past decade have put American capitalism in crisis. Now, living in America's heartland, Zingales warns in A Capitalism for the People that the U.S. economy risks deteriorating into a pro-business rather than pro-market system run by corrupt politicians. Presenting a real-world blueprint to restore true competition to our economic system, Zingales gives hope that the U.S. can rebound to greatness.

Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity

A Capitalism for the People

Raghuram G. Rajan

We investigate the determinants of capital structure choice by analyzing the financing decisions of public firms in the major industrialized countries. At an aggregate level, firm leverage is fairly similar across the G-7 countries. We find that factors identified by previous studies as correlated in the cross-section with firm leverage in the United States, are similarly correlated in other countries as well. However, a deeper examination of the U.S. and foreign evidence suggests that the theoretical underpinnings of the observed correlations are still largely unresolved.

Some Evidence from International Data

What Do We Know about Capital Structure?

Does finance affect economic growth? A number of studies have identified a positive correlation between the level of development of a country's financial sector and the rate of growth of its per capita income. As has been noted elsewhere, the observed correlation does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. This paper examines whether financial development facilitates economic growth by scrutinizing one rationale for such a relationship; that financial development reduces the costs of external finance to firms. Specifically, we ask whether industrial sectors that are relatively more in need of external finance develop disproportionately faster in countries with more developed financial markets. We find this to be true in a large sample of countries over the 1980s. We show this result is unlikely to be driven by omitted variables, outliers, or reverse causality.

Financial Dependence and Growth

Krishna B. Kumar

Abstract: Motivated by theories of the firm, which we classify as technological' or organizational, ' we analyze the determinants of firm size across industries and across countries in a sample of 15 European countries. We find that, on average, firms facing larger markets are larger. At the industry level, we find firms in the utility sector are large, perhaps because they enjoy a natural, or officially sanctioned, monopoly. Capital intensive industries, high wage industries, and industries that do a lot of R & D have larger firms, as do industries that require little external financing. At the country level, the most salient findings are that countries with efficient judicial systems have larger firms, and, correcting for institutional development, there is little evidence that richer countries have larger firms. Interestingly, institutional development, such as greater judicial efficiency, seems to be correlated with lower dispersion in firm size within an industry. The effects of interactions (between an industry's characteristics and a country's environment) on size are perhaps the most novel results in the paper, and are best able to discriminate between theories. As the judicial system improves, the difference in size between firms in capital intensive industries and firms in industries that use little physical capital diminishes, a finding consistent with size of firms in industries dependent on external finance is larger in countries with better financial markets, suggesting that financial constraints limit average firm size.

What Determines Firm Size?

Abstract: Transactions take place in the firm rather than in the market because the firm offers agents" who make specific investments power. Past literature emphasizes the allocation of ownership as the" primary mechanism by which the firm does this. Within the contractibility assumptions of this" literature, we identify a potentially superior mechanism, the regulation of access to critical resources." Access can be better than ownership because: i) the power agents get from access is more contingent" on them making the right investment; ii) ownership has adverse effects on the incentive to specialize." The theory explains the importance of internal organization and third party ownership."

Power in a Theory of the Firm

The Politics of Financial Development in the 20th Century

The Great Reversals

Rajan and Zingales demonstrate that free and open financial markets inspire human ingenuity, make nations competitive, and spread prosperity. In the wake of recent business scandals, financial markets are often thought of as parasitic institutions that feed off the blood, sweat, and tears of human endeavour. Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists shows that such markets in fact supply the fuel of a vital economy. And they are the only effective antidote to counteract the manipulations of elite groups that keep a tight grip on capital and restrict the economic development of nations and the entrepreneurial success of individuals.'Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists will dismay both titans of industry and their foes across the barricades, the anti-globalisation left that sees little in capitalism worth saving. It's written for the rest of us - all those who simply want a fair chance to prosper.'Business Week'Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists is a highly original study of the ways in which vested interests have sought throughout history to protect their wealth and power by rigging the market structure, even subverting free markets entirely when it suits them.'Washington Post

Abstract: In the last two decades the European financial markets have become more market oriented. We analyze the economic and political forces that have triggered these changes as well as their likely welfare implications. We also try to assess whether this trend will continue. Based on our analysis, we conjecture that even if Europe might benefit from a continuation of the trend, in the near future political support for it is likely to become much weaker. Furthermore, without serious reforms, the trend is likely to benefit Southern Europe less than Northern Europe.

The Changing Character of European Finance

Banks and Markets

Abstract: Major technological, regulatory, and institutional changes have made finance more widely available in recent years, amounting to a bone fide 'financial revolution'. In this article, we focus on the impact the financial revolution has had on the way firms are (or should be) organized and managed, and on the policy consequences.

The Influence of the Financial Revolution on the Nature of Firms

Raghavendra Rau

Robert Wardrop

This handbook provides the first comprehensive overview of the fast-evolving alternative finance space and makes a timely and in-depth contribution to the literature in this area. Bringing together expert contributions in the field from both practitioners and academics, in one of the most dynamic parts of the financial sector, it provides a solid reference for this exciting discipline. Divided into six parts, Section 1 presents a high-level overview of the technologically-enabled finance space. It also offers a historical perspective on technological finance models and outlines different business models. Section 2 analyses digital currencies including guides to bitcoins, other cryptocurrencies, and blockchains. Section 3 addresses alternative payment systems such as digital money and asset tokenization. Section 4 deals with crowdfunding models from both a theoretical perspective and from a regulatory perspective. Section 5 discusses data-driven business models and includes a discussion of neural networks and deep learning. Finally, Section 6 discusses welfare implications of the technological finance revolution. This collection highlights the most current developments to date and the state-of-the-art in alternative finance, while also indicating areas of further potential. Acting as a roadmap for future research in this innovative and promising area of finance, this handbook is a solid reference work for academics and students whilst also appealing to industry practitioners, businesses and policy-makers.

The Palgrave Handbook of Technological Finance

Mathias Dewatripont

Philippe Aghion

Patrick Legros

The 1986 article by Sanford J. Grossman and Oliver D. Hart titled "A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration" has provided a framework for understanding how firm boundaries are defined and how they affect economic performance. The property rights approach has provided a formal way to introduce incomplete contracting ideas into economic modeling. The Impact of Incomplete Contracts on Economics collects papers and opinion pieces on the impact that this property right approach to the firm has had on the economics profession.

The Impact of Incomplete Contracts on Economics

Born in Italy, University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales witnessed firsthand the consequences of high inflation and unemployment -- paired with rampant nepotism and cronyism -- on a country's economy. This experience profoundly shaped his professional interests, and in 1988 he arrived in the United States, armed with a political passion and the belief that economists should not merely interpret the world, but should change it for the better. In A Capitalism for the People, Zingales makes a forceful, philosophical, and at times personal argument that the roots of American capitalism are dying, and that the result is a drift toward the more corrupt systems found throughout Europe and much of the rest of the world. American capitalism, according to Zingales, grew in a unique incubator that provided it with a distinct flavor of competitiveness, a meritocratic nature that fostered trust in markets and a faith in mobility. Lately, however, that trust has been eroded by a betrayal of our pro-business elites, whose lobbying has come to dictate the market rather than be subject to it, and this betrayal has taken place with the complicity of our intellectual class. Because of this trend, much of the country is questioning -- often with great anger -- whether the system that has for so long buoyed their hopes has now betrayed them once and for all. What we are left with is either anti-market pitchfork populism or pro-business technocratic insularity. Neither of these options presents a way to preserve what the author calls "the lighthouse" of American capitalism. Zingales argues that the way forward is pro-market populism, a fostering of truly free and open competition for the good of the people -- not for the good of big business. Drawing on the historical record of American populism at the turn of the twentieth century, Zingales illustrates how our current circumstances aren't all that different. People in the middle and at the bottom are getting squeezed, while people at the top are only growing richer. The solutions now, as then, are reforms to economic policy that level the playing field. Reforms that may be anti-business (specifically anti-big business), but are squarely pro-market. The question is whether we can once again muster the courage to confront the powers that be.

Luigi Zingales

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