Brazil: Stock Markets and Corporate Credit Now Driving Financialization?

Abstract

The present article seeks to demonstrate that, despite the steep deterioration in social and economic indicators in the midst of an unprecedented social, political, and economic crisis, Brazil seems to have entered a new stage of the process of financialization, now shaped by the dynamics of the capital market. We briefly recall the different phases of financialization in Brazil from eliticized-to mass-based, underlining how the sharp decline in the prime rate as of late led to a strong valuation of financial assets in the stock market. We test the hypothesis of a new financialization pattern, now driven by the stock market, using in our regression model a sample of 81 different segments (non-financial) from the Economatica platform, from 2010 to 2019. The results indicate a change of command in the finance-dominated accumulation regime in Brazil, that is, corporate financialization is now also determined by the stock market valuation process, due to the fall in return on financial investments (notably government securities). Selic-driven financialization has been substituted by other forces, such as corporate credit and-a relevant new factor-investments in shares.