The financialization of the business enterprise

This dissertation focuses on the theoretical and empirical causes and consequences of the financialization of the business enterprise. The first chapter argues that the transition from the Post-War SSA to the Contemporary SSA was accompanied by a paradigm shift in in the field of economics from the Keynesian/institutionalist to the neoliberal paradigm. Simultaneously, the nexus of contracts definition replaced the resource-based definition as the dominant paradigm of the economic theory of the firm. The second part of the first chapter documents how this ontological shift permeated the fields of law, theories of management, and strategy. The second chapter of this dissertation examines the transmission mechanism through which the theoretical assumptions of neoclassical agency theory influenced reality. The second chapter studies the diffusion of agency theory into corporate practice as an example of how theory can simultaneously be impacted by and have an impact on the world. The third chapter provides a review of the literature and recent trends on the relationship between institutional ownership and investment and develops the hypotheses for our meta-analysis. The fourth chapter conducts a meta-analysis of the relationship between institutional ownership and corporate investment behavior. The analysis in the fourth chapter also examines the role of the financial structure on the institutional ownership---corporate investment relationship. The fifth chapter concludes the dissertation, provides some theoretical and policy implications, and suggests avenues for future research.