Financialisation and the Portuguese real investment: a supportive or a disruptive relationship?

Abstract

This paper aims to address empirically the relationship between financialisation and real investment by Portuguese non-financial corporations from 1977 to 2013. An equation to describe aggregate investment is estimated, which includes the traditional or standard variables (profitability, debt, cost of capital, savings rate and business cycle) and two further measures to capture the phenomenon of financialisation (financial receipts and financial payments). Financialisation, on the one hand, leads to a rise of financial investments by non-financial corporations, which deviates funds from real investment (“crowding out” effect). On the other hand, the pressure to intensify financial payments restrains the available funds for real investments. The paper concludes that there is a long-term relationship between all variables, and also finds evidence that the process of financialisation has hampered real investment, mainly through financial payments.