Research documents Titler
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Tomio, Davide (Frederiksberg, 2017)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The first essay investigates how credit risk, the risk that a bond issuer will default, affects bond market liquidity. Specifically, we depart from the current literature in that we analyze the direct and indirect channels through which credit risk affects market liquidity, rather than determining whether both are priced in the bond. We focus on the Italian sovereign bond market, which allows us to determine how central bank interventions affect the sensitivity of the liquidity provision by market makers to default risk. We motivate our empirical analysis with a simple model of a risk averse market maker, holding an inventory of a risky asset and setting her optimal marginal quotes (and, therefore, the optimal bid-ask spread), in the presence of margin constraints and borrowing costs. The margins, set by a clearing house, depend on the risk of the asset, as measured by the CDS spread, and the actions of the central bank. The CDS market is fundamental to the market maker’s and the clearing house’s decisions, since it is from the CDS market that they deduce the future volatility of the asset return. In addition, the market maker can pledge her assets at the central bank to finance her positions at rates influenced by the central bank’s actions. The model provides several empirical predictions that we test in the empirical section of the paper. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9482 Filer i denne post: 1
Davide Tomio.pdf (2.469Mb) -
Stenbo Nielsen, Mads (Frederiksberg, 2011)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The thesis consists of three essays that cover different aspects of correlation modelling in corporate default risk. Each essay is self-contained and can be read independently. Essay I: Correlation in corporate defaults: Contagion or conditional independence? Essay II: Systematic and idiosyncratic default risk in synthetic credit markets. Essay III: Credit spreads across the business cycle. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8370 Filer i denne post: 1
Mads_Stenbo_Nielsen.pdf (5.032Mb) -
Bajlum, Claus (København, 2008)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This Ph.D. thesis consists of three self-contained chapters, which can be read independently. The chapters are interrelated through their use of structural credit risk models and a credit derivative known as the Credit Default Swap (CDS). Chapter 1 estimates the impact of accounting transparency on the term structure of CDS spreads for a large cross-section of firms. Chapter 2 analyzes the use of CDS spreads in a convergence-type trading strategy known as capital structure arbitrage. Finally Chapter 3 estimates the time-series behaviour of the credit risk premium in the market for Credit Default Swaps. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6520 Filer i denne post: 1
claus_bajlum.pdf (1.513Mb) -
Jessen, Lasse J. (Frederiksberg, 2016)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This thesis consists of three independent chapters on the elicitation of individual discount rates and on the estimation of gambling prevalence in Denmark. The first chapter, “Discount Rate Sensitivity to Background Consumption and Consumption Smoothing,” studies the sensitivity of individual discount rates with respect to background consumption and consumption smoothing. I use simulated choice data from standard decision tasks in time preference experiments and show that individual discount rates are sensitive to assumptions with respect to background consumption and consumption smoothing if the utility function is non-linear and exogenous. However, if discount rates and the utility function are elicited jointly, discount rates are robust to assumptions on time-invariant background consumption and consumption smoothing. The analysis clarifies mixed conclusions from previous studies and indicates which elicitation methods provide robust estimates of individual discount rates. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9325 Filer i denne post: 1
Lasse_J_Jessen.pdf (3.019Mb) -
Bruun, Mark (Frederiksberg, 2016)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This dissertation addresses the prediction of corporate earnings. The thesis aims to examine whether the degree of precision in earnings forecasts can be increased by basing them on historical financial ratios. Furthermore, the intent of the dissertation is to analyze whether accounting standards affect the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecasts. Finally, the objective of the dissertation is to investigate how the stock market is affected by the accuracy of corporate earnings projections. The dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of these issues. First, it is shown how earnings forecasts can be generated based on historical timeseries patterns of financial ratios. This is done by modeling the return on equity and the growth-rate in equity as two separate but correlated timeseries processes which converge to a long-term, constant level. Empirical results suggest that these earnings forecasts are not more accurate than the simpler forecasts based on a historical timeseries of earnings. Secondly, the dissertation shows how accounting standards affect analysts’ earnings predictions. Accounting conservatism contributes to a more volatile earnings process, which lowers the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecasts. Furthermore, the dissertation shows how the stock market’s reaction to the disclosure of information about corporate earnings depends on how well corporate earnings can be predicted. The dissertation indicates that the stock market’s reaction to the disclosure of earnings information is stronger for firms whose earnings can be predicted with higher accuracy than it is for firms whose earnings can not be predicted with the same degree of accuracy. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9298 Filer i denne post: 1
Mark_Bruun.pdf (2.215Mb) -
Amore, Mario Daniele (Frederiksberg, 2012)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The effect of corporate governance and managers on the value of companies has received great attention in the recent public debate. In the academic research, this increased attention has been associated with an effort to develop finer conceptual frameworks and analytical techniques to assess how governance and financial characteristics influence corporate policies and profitability. While theoretical models represent a successful approach under specific hypotheses, the econometric analysis of corporate governance and managerial characteristics has proven to be extremely challenging. Because governance and managerial characteristics are equilibrium outcomes largely determined by the firm itself, it is methodologically difficult to separate out their determinants from their consequences to infer causal effects. Since its infancy the empirical corporate governance and corporate finance research has faced this problem, which is often responsible for mixed empirical results. In my dissertation, I adopt a common methodological framework developed in the “program evaluation” literature to shed new light on the effects of governance and managerial characteristics on a variety of corporate policies and, ultimately, firm performance. In particular, I estimate a class of difference-in-differences models deriving the empirical identifications from policy changes that generate “quasi-natural experiments”. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8451 Filer i denne post: 1
Mario_Daniele_Amore.pdf (1.242Mb) -
Faigen, Benjamin (Frederiksberg, 2016)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This thesis examines ownership of the firm by its employees, of varying stakes. It begins by identifying the existence of employee ownership in a Chinese context, presented in the form of a general analytical discussion which is informed by a review of the available evidence on the subject. This work sets the stage for a focus on this form of ownership at the individual level of analysis, involving both conceptual and empirical explorations. Together, this constitutes three papers, put together with introductory and concluding chapters. The first thesis paper identifies the drivers of, and barriers to, employee ownership in China at three levels of analysis: the societal, organisational and individual. Its intended contribution to the employee ownership literature is to organise the scattered evidence in order to provide a systematic and comprehensive coverage of the development of this phenomenon. Employee ownership is found to have played a role in Chinese economic transition as a transitory phase before non-state enterprises were afforded official recognition in a context of publicly-owned enterprise privatisation. Senior managers became the key beneficiaries in firm sales and most ventures that were at one stage employee-owned, dissolved. Outside of a couple of notable examples in the tertiary sector, enterprises featuring some level of employees as owners persist in reduced numbers in rural areas today. In the second thesis paper, the interest is in the role of the individual actor with regard to employee ownership outside of a narrower Chinese context. At this level of analysis, it is preferences (attitudes) and resources which are decisive. A more detailed exploration of the former in particular follows, the idea being to theorise the compatibility of defined individual ‘types’ with specific ownership structures. Yet, because the existence of different forms and mechanisms with regard to employee ownership is not always made clear in the related literature, notable pathways to ownership— cooperative, professional partnership, controlling ownership, share ownership plan mechanism, share option mechanism, and direct ownership—are first clarified to facilitate the analysis. The paper’s overall contribution to the literature is the provision of a coherent conceptual treatment of the individual-level antecedents to employee ownership. The third thesis paper comprises mixed-method empirical research into the characteristics of individuals who have recently purchased shares in their employing firms in an Icelandic context, as well as their specific motives for doing so (or reasons for not doing so). Determinants of employee ownership, as well as direct insights into the considerations surrounding share acquisition, are less common at this level of analysis and this is the where the paper contributes to the literature. In order to conduct the empirical analysis, original material is gathered from six case study firms, the details of which are presented within the paper. Income, tenure and age are found to influence ownership status. Furthermore, some support is found for financial motives outweighing non-financial motives behind share purchases in minority employee-owned firms relative to majority employee-owned firms. Internal barriers to ownership, together with a lack of funds, hindered share purchases in majority employee-owned firms in particular. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9392 Filer i denne post: 1
Benjamin Faigen.pdf (1.949Mb) -
Zhou, Haoyong (Frederiksberg, 2012)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The dissertation examines corporate performance and capital structure of family firms, contributing to the limited empirical research on family firms. Family firms are prevalent in national economies all over the world. It is the prevalence that makes family firms receive increasing attentions from academia. The dissertation consists of an introduction and three chapters. Each chapter is an independent paper. The first chapter is a joint work with Professor Morten Bennedsen and Dr. Markus Ampenberger. The version of in the dissertation will be published as Chapter 6 in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurial Finance by Oxford University Press. The second paper and third paper are single-authored papers. In the first chapter, we discuss the capital structure of family firms, with a focus on the debtequity mix. Two parts comprise the chapter. In the first part, we provide a literature review on existing theoretical and empirical research in the capital structure of family firms. The literature review shows that the most important theories to explain capital structure in family firms seem to be risk aversion, agency theory, and control considerations. We argue that risk aversion and control considerations have opposing impacts on the optimal choice of debt leverage of family firms. On one hand, controlling families of family firms are typically non-diversified investors with most of their wealth and human capital tied to the company and consequently family firms use less debt. On the other hand, controlling families want to maintain the control over their companies. This control consideration restricts the willingness to raise new equity outside the family and therefore often lead to a stronger dependence on banks and other debt instruments. The literature review also shows that evidence on capital structure choices of family firms is inconclusive. Large-scale evidence on private family firms is almost missing. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8607 Filer i denne post: 1
Haoyong_Zhou.pdf (2.035Mb) -
Bäckman, Claes (Frederiksberg, 2017)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: In Denmark and in many countries around the world, housing markets are of considerable importance for households and policy-makers alike. As the boom and bust in the US and Danish housing market so aptly demonstrated, disruptions in the housing market potentially have wide-ranging consequences for individual households and for the aggregate economy. Housing is important because we all have to live somewhere, but also because it serves as a considerable source of both wealth and debt. As such, housing market policy can not only create vast benefits for many, but can also have substantial negative impacts for all, and should therefore be a topic of major interest for economists and policy makers alike. This Ph.D. thesis, entitled “Essays on Housing Markets”, analyzes the Danish housing market during the 2000s, with a focus on how policy changes affected house prices and how changes in house prices affect households. While independent, each chapter in this thesis attempts to contribute to our understanding of how housing markets function, and has important lessons for policy-makers and economists around the world. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9438 Filer i denne post: 1
Claes Bäckman.pdf (5.016Mb) -
Liu, Yun (Frederiksberg, 2016)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This Ph.D. thesis is composed of four independent research papers in the field of Market Design. It begins with a general introduction for all four papers and ends with a brief conclusion. In this thesis, I study the impact of heterogeneous market participants on allocation outcomes in different market mechanisms; in addition, how to design alternative mechanisms that can more effectively allocate scarce resources with diverse economic and social goals. Chapter 1 studies the impact of affirmative action policies in the context of school choice. It addresses the following two questions: what are the causes of possible perverse consequence of affirmative action policies, and when the designer can effectively implement affirmative actions without unsatisfactory outcomes. Using the minority reserve policy in the student optimal stable mechanism as an example, I show that two acyclicity conditions, type-specific acyclicity and strongly type-specific acyclicity, are crucial for effective affirmative action policies. However, these two cycle conditions are almost impossible to be satisfied in any finite market in practice. Given the limitation of the point-wise effectiveness in finite markets, I further illustrate that the minority reserve policy is approximately effective in the sense that the probability of a random market containing type-specific cycles converges to zero when the copies of schools grow to infinite. Chapter 2 addresses the question of how ex ante asymmetry affects bidders’ equilibrium strategies in two popular multi-unit auction rules: uniform-price auction (UPA) and discriminatory-price auction (DPA). I characterize the set of asymmetric monotone Bayes–Nash equilibria in a simple multi-unit auction game in which two units of a homogeneous object are auctioned among a set of bidders. I argue that bidders’ strategic behavior essentially comes from their diverse market positions (i.e., the winning probability and the probability of deciding the market-clearing price). That is, if a bidder has a relatively strong market position, she has less incentive to shade her bid for the second unit in a UPA, whereas in a DPA, weaker bidders tend to bid more aggressively on both of two units. Following Chapter 2, Chapter 3 further analyzes and contrasts bidders’ collusion incentives at the ex ante stage. My results indicate that the UPA is more vulnerable to collusion than the DPA in term of the expected per-member payoff and the core-stability. In the last chapter, I show that a variant of the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves auction, Ausubel’s clinching auction, is vulnerable to collusion in the sense that it always has a nonempty core. I further discuss an isomorphism relation between group strategy-proofness and non-bossiness in allocation, and the incompatibility between efficient allocation and non-bossiness in finite auction markets. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9363 Filer i denne post: 1
Yun_Liu.pdf (1.321Mb) -
Forssbæck, Jens (Frederiksberg, 2009)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The thesis studies how financial markets discipline commercial and central banks’ behavior in various ways. In the first part, two papers test different aspects of market discipline of commercial banks’ risk taking, using a dataset of several hundred banks worldwide. In the first paper, it is shown that the risk-shifting opportunity of shareholders introduced by deposit insurance depends on ownership structure and the extent of market discipline by uninsured creditors. I find that the effect of shareholder control on risk is convex, and that creditor discipline tempers this effect but has little individual influence on risk. The second paper tests the monitoring dimension of market discipline and formulates a two-step procedure which makes it possible to sidestep the common methodological problem that banks’ ‘true’ risk is unobserved. Results suggest that if the quality of institutions is sufficiently high, some market-based indicators may be more accurate measures of banks’ true risk than a set of commonly used accounting-based benchmark indicators – a possibility effectively precluded by much of previous research. In the second part of the thesis, three papers study constraints on central bank behavior introduced by financial markets, using data from a set of small, open European economies during the 1980s and 1990s. The first of these papers tests how capital account liberalization and exchange-rate regime constrain monetary policy autonomy. Contrary to traditional theory, the paper finds no autonomy effect of exchange rate flexibility, whereas capital controls provided some (albeit limited) independence from innovations in foreign money market interest rates. The remaining two papers address how deregulation, innovation, and growth in domestic money markets interplay with central banks’ choices of monetary policy operating procedures. The analysis of the European countries suggests that while deregulation and the emergence of short-term financial markets constrained central bank discretion and compelled increased reliance on open market operations, the paths of money market development in different countries were also partially determined by the respective central banks’ decisions. In the final paper, the same framework of analysis is applied to China, which has announced its intention to rely increasingly on market operations in monetary policy. The results suggest that the disciplining effect of domestic financial markets on central bank behavior in China is so far very small, largely due to remaining de facto financial repression. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7785 Filer i denne post: 1
Jens_Forssbæck.pdf (3.819Mb) -
Clementi, Federico (Frederiksberg, 2017)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This Thesis consists of an introduction followed by three independent chapters. Each chapter is a self-contained paper that can be read independently. They cover different topics of international economics with a specific focus on multinational production and international trade. A common feature to all the papers is that they are micro-based empirical analyses of the effects of globalization on the competitiveness of companies. The first and last chapters are solo papers, while the second is coauthored with Friedrich Bermann, PhD student at Copenhagen Business School. The first paper studies the impact of foreign direct investment on the intensity of competition in the host economy. In this chapter I use firm-level data of Romanian manufacturing companies active between 2001 and 2008 and I measure the impact of foreign ownership on the market power of affiliates and local competitors. The empirical evidence shows that foreign ownership is associated to a higher market power, which I proxy with firms’ estimated markups. Moreover, I find that higher competition of foreign affiliates is associated to a decrease in the markups charged by domestic firms. In the second chapter we analyze how the strategy of vertical integration of foreign multinationals modifies the nature of productivity spillovers perceived by local suppliers (i.e. backward spillovers). Building on the results of previous research on productivity spillovers and on multinational production, we argue that backward productivity spillovers should be weaker if foreign multinationals are vertically integrated in the industry of local suppliers. We test this hypothesis using a panel dataset of firm-level data of European manufacturing companies. We find that the vertical integration of foreign multinationals does in fact modify the intensity of spillovers to local suppliers. Domestic firms benefit only from the activity of foreign clients that are not vertically integrated in their industry. In the last chapter, I use a detailed dataset of international transactions of Danish companies to study the impact of Chinese competition on the pricing strategy of Danish exporters. I also explore the role of quality differentiation in determining the nature and intensity of this effect. I find that Chinese export represents a source of stiffer competitive pressure for Danish exporters that are forced to reduce the prices they charge. This effect depends on the quality of Danish products. I find the producers of low-quality goods reduce their prices less intensively than producers of high-quality ones. This is because producers of low-quality varieties react to Chinese competition upgrading the quality of their products. This mitigates the downward pressure on prices. I finally reconcile these results by using quality-adjusted prices. Using this measure I find that quality does in fact protect Danish exporters from the pressure of Chinese competition. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9469 Filer i denne post: 1
Federico Clementi.pdf (1.584Mb) -
Vinten, Frederik Christian (København, 2008)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: We study the impact of stock market valuations on delistings from European stock exchanges 1996-2004. Previous research has found that mergers and acquisitions (M&A) occur more often when market valuations are high. This is paradoxical since it implies that companies are more likely to engage in M&A when it is most expensive. In accordance with prior research we find that delistings by mergers and acquisitions are more likely when industry market-to-book values (q) are high. In contrast, we find no effect of industry q on going private transactions. The data also suggest that M&A are more likely to take place in bull years while going private transactions are relatively more likely in bear years. Our study is the first comprehensive study of delistings in Europe and the first study to demonstrate that going private transactions appear to be driven by different causal mechanisms than M&A. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7682 Filer i denne post: 1
frederik_vinten.pdf (1.449Mb) -
Fux, Sebastian (Frederiksberg, 2014)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This thesis consists of three essays of which two are about return predictability while the last essay covers term structure models. Return predictability is still a heavily debated issue among nancial economists as well as practitioners in the nancial industry. The ability to predict stock returns out-of-sample, that is, by relying on information available at time t, is still controversial. In a recent paper, Goyal and Welch (2008) comprehensively reexamine the performance of 14 predictor variables that have been suggested by the academic literature to be powerful predictors of the U.S. equity premium, that is, the S&P 500 index return minus the short-term interest rate. The authors conclude that none of these predictor variables led to robust predictions across di erent forecast horizons and sample periods which consistently beat benchmark models such as the historical mean. In a response to Goyal and Welch (2008) Campbell and Thompson (2008) nd evidence of out-of-sample predictability by putting some economically meaningful restrictions on the coe cients of the predictive regressions. However, the out-of-sample explanatory power is nil, but nonetheless it is economically signi cant for investors with mean-variance preferences. The predictability literature argues that the out-of-sample predictability deteriorates due to structural breaks such as macroeconomic instability, changes in monetary policy, new regulations etc. Thus, not only the predictor model changes over time, but also its coef- cients. Goyal and Welch (2008) explain that more sophisticated models accounting for structural breaks might be able to consistently beat historical mean predictions. Additionally, predictability su ers from model uncertainty, meaning that there is only little consensus about the correct predictor variables and hence, the correct speci cation of the predictor model is unknown. The Bayesian framework accounts for model uncertainty by computing posterior model probabilities for all possible predictor models. Thus, Bayesian forecasts condition on the whole information set as opposed to conditioning on a single predictor variable and lead to more accurate forecasts. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8906 Filer i denne post: 1
Sebastian_Fux.pdf (1.090Mb) -
Boscán F., Luis R. (Frederiksberg, 2016)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This PhD thesis consists of five essays on the economics of Power System Flexibility, a topic that has traditionally been addressed from a technical perspective by engineers, system planners, electricity industry stakeholders and energy policymakers interested in the integration of Variable Renewable Energy. While significant progress has been made in the understanding and characterization of exibility, its economic properties and the required incentives to provide it have not been suficiently analyzed. The present work aims at filling this gap. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9367 Filer i denne post: 1
Luis R Boscán F.pdf (3.519Mb) -
Tang Andersen, Allan Sall (Frederiksberg, 2011)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: The topic of this thesis is the modeling of risks in interest-rate and inflation markets. Interest-rate risk is an important issue to investors. For instance, according to BIS (2010) the notional value of over-the-counter interest-rate derivatives markets is 465,260 billion US-dollar. This corresponds to 77 percent of the notional of the entire OTC derivatives market. Thus interest-rate derivatives is at the back-bone of the financial markets. According to ISDA (2009) 83 percent of Fortune 500 companies report using interest-rate derivatives in their risk management. Furthermore, many mortgage-based loans and pension contracts contain either explicit or implicit interest-rate options. Thus a better understanding of the interest-rate derivative markets, and the risk associated with the traded products is of great value, both to financial and non-financial companies as well as individuals.... URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8339 Filer i denne post: 1
AllanSallTangAnderen_PhDThesis.pdf (2.088Mb) -
Henningsson, Stefan; Hanseth, Ole (, 2011)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This paper inquires into the complexities of contemporary IT solutions based on a case study of the EU’s eCustoms initiatives using Manuel DeLanda’s Assemblage Theory. Technological innovations have enabled information infrastructures with dramatically increased number and heterogeneity of included components, and their dynamic and unexpected interactions. Unfortunately, lack of understanding of how the increasing complexity influences development initiatives is hampering effective information infrastructure development. Assemblage Theory can be seen as holistic synthesis of previous research streams seeking to explain how information infrastructures evolve in social contexts. Accordingly, in this paper it helps us getting a holistic grasp of the complexity of contemporary IT solutions and the “essence” of their dynamics. Through Assemblage Theory we explain how the European eCustoms information infrastructure has through a dialectic between stabilizing and destabilizing processes assumed its current shape - a result of decisions taken decades ago, path dependency, complexity, and accumulated emergence. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8632 Filer i denne post: 1
Henningsson_Hanseth_2011.pdf (680.2Kb) -
between the "unification" and "fragmentation" trapKnudsen, Christian (København, 2002)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
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Jeppesen, Kim K. (København, 2008)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This paper examines recent attempts to professionalize Danish public sector auditing by the establishment of a certification of public sector auditors known in Danish as Certificeret Offentlig Revisor (COR). The establishment of the COR-certification has led to a dispute over the public sector auditing jurisdiction between a coalition of public sector auditors and the professional bodies of the private sector auditors. The paper outlines the process that led to the decision to create the COR-certification, analyse the COR coalition’s attempt to build a network of support for its jurisdictional claim of expertise, and discusses the general implications of the case for the ongoing attempt to create a European certification of public sector auditors. *) Paper presented at the 5th EIASM International Conference on Accounting, Auditing & Management in Public Sector Reforms, Amsterdam September 3-5, 2008 URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6745 Filer i denne post: 1
wp_2008-01.pdf (105.0Kb) -
Henri Lefebvre’s ‘Work of Art’ and Scholarly Poli0cal EngagementBarinaga, Ester (Frederiksberg, 2014)[Flere oplysninger][Færre oplysninger]
Resume: This article takes up Lefebvre’s challenge to apply the intellectual tools of the academy to the practical production of urban space, and discusses an effort to make use of our theories of signification in re-articulating stigmatized suburbs. Often referred to as ‘vulnerable’, ‘disenfranchised’ or ‘marginalized’, stigmatized suburbs and the people living in them are targeted by many social and economic initiatives simply because they are distinctly vulnerable, marginalized or disenfranchised. In so doing, initiatives interpellate and reproduce the geographical imaginary that is both the outcome and the source of their target groups’ political disadvantage. The article shows how a particular community initiative attempts to overcome the problem of interpellation. It uses Callon’s notion of ‘the qualification of products’ to understand the initiative’s efforts to transcend the objectification of the targeted groups as well as the symbolic limitation of agency. This allows us to follow the process by which the initiative attempts to re-symbolize the body and the neighborhood identified through the category of ‘the immigrant’. The article suggests that efforts to overcome the problem of interpellation must go beyond the realm of the symbolic to include, as well, social and material elements. The article ends with a reflexive note on the extent to which the engaged scholar is also caught within the interpellation paradox. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/9020 Filer i denne post: 1
Barinaga - spatial resistance4.pdf (226.5Kb)