MPIfG Scholar in Residence Lectures 2011

 
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The Changing Politics of Joint Investment Decisions

J. Nicholas Ziegler

 
The advanced political economies are today characterized by growing challenges in regulating their capital markets. As capital markets take on increasing importance, policymakers rely increasingly on indirect methods of regulation and self-enforcing governance frameworks. These three lectures present several cases for a theory that emphasizes the ongoing salience of interest-group politics after the formal enactment of reform legislation in this new environment. In his earlier work, J. Nicholas Ziegler has compared the significance of professional identities among technical elites for sector-specific industrial policies in France and Germany. His lectures this year will focus on specific institutional settings in the United States and Germany that illustrate how societies make decisions about committing resources to public purposes.

 
Die Politik gemeinsamer Investitionsentscheidungen im Wandel. Die entwickelten politischen Ökonomien sehen sich heute mit wachsenden Herausforderungen im Bereich der Kapitalmarktregulierung konfrontiert. Angesichts der gestiegenen Bedeutung der Kapitalmärkte ist die Politik zunehmend auf indirekte Methoden der Regulierung und auf die Selbstregulierung durch die Finanzmarktakteure angewiesen. Die drei Vorträge behandeln Bausteine einer Theorie politischer Regulierung, die die Bedeutung organisierter Interessen nach der Ingangsetzung von Reformen in Rechnung stellt. In seinen früheren Arbeiten hat J. Nicholas Ziegler die Prägekraft beruflicher Identitäten im Rahmen sektorenspezifischer Industriepolitiken in Frankreich und Deutschland verglichen. Seine diesjährigen Vorträge werden die institutionellen Bedingungen in den USA und in Deutschland behandeln, vor deren Hintergrund private Ressourcen öffentlichen Zielen anheimgestellt werden.
 

 

 
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 | 5 p.m.
Financial Crisis and Regulatory Response in the United States
As the central location for the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the United States provides clear evidence of three broad trends, which shape investment decisions in varying ways in all advanced economies. These trends include: financialization or the expanding role of financial markets in the economy; an increasing emphasis on shareholder conceptions of ownership; and a growing reliance by policymakers on experiments in industry self-governance. The first lecture shows how these trends pre-dated the crisis, largely explain its magnitude, and remain prominent in regulatory efforts to prevent similar crises in the future.

 

 

 
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 | 5 p.m.
Pension Reform in Germany
One way governments have experimented with new forms of policy delivery concerns the rules for old-age pension provision. The German reforms of 2001 were a particularly illustrative example of the shift away from intergenerational financing toward individually funded, or capitalized, pension accounts. This lecture examines the German reforms in comparative perspective to show how decentralized methods of post-enactment implementation have shaped the political consequences of the reforms so far.

 

 

 
Tuesday, Juli 5, 2011 | 5 p.m.
Comparative Perspectives on Corporate Governance
The rules of corporate governance – the legal forms in which firms can organize themselves – are another policy area where political decisions shape modes of collective investment. The public stock company is the predominant form of company organization for large firms in Germany as well as the United States. Since the 1990s, regulatory authorities in both countries have relied increasingly on expanded disclosure, strengthened shareholder rights, and self-enforcing regulations to limit the power of managers. This lecture examines these changes and assesses the prospects that they might, in tandem with supporting regulatory changes, point the way toward a more equitable and less crisis-prone form of market competition in the future.