Most empirical macroeconomic research is limited to the period since World War II. This paper analyses the effects of changes in income distribution and in private wealth on consumption and investment covering a period from as early as 1855 through to 2010 for the UK, France, Germany and the USA, based on the data set of Piketty and Zucman (2014). We contribute to the study of wealth effects, of financialization, and of the nature of demand regimes. We find that overall domestic demand has been wage-led in the USA, the UK and Germany. Total investment responds positively to higher wage shares, which is driven by residential investment. For corporate investment alone, we find a negative relation. Wealth effects are found to be positive and significant for consumption in the USA and the UK, but weaker in France and Germany. Investment is negatively affected by private wealth in the USA and the UK, but positively in France and Germany.
Two broad, complementary approaches have defined the literature on interlocking directorates. Inter-organizational theories see them as an outgrowth of firms’ efforts to monitor and manage their commercial environment. Intra-class theories focus on their functionality in harmonizing and coordinating the political action of different segments of the capitalist elite. But comparative work on network formation has drawn almost exclusively on the first of these approaches—linking variation in typologies to the economic institutions that shape patterns of inter-firm engagement. Here I deploy a synthesis of inter-organizational and intra-class theories to understand the evolution of the South African corporate network over the post-Apartheid period. I trace out a broad trend of fragmentation as a hierarchical business system gave way to one modeled on Anglo-Saxon lines. But I also demonstrate the persistence of a cohesive core in the network, firstly centered around the historically dominant social bloc, and subsequently around the personal networks of politically connected black directors. The results show the potential of intra-class theories to enrich our understanding of how corporate networks form and change.
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