The financialisation-offshoring nexus and the capital accumulation of U.S. nonfinancial firms

The financialisation of the nonfinancial corporation has drawn the attention of many scholars who have identified two channels by which financialisation happens: a higher proportion of financial assets compared to nonfinancial ones and a higher amount of resources distributed to financial markets. One of the consequences of this is the decrease in investment. Parallel to financialisation, many nonfinancial corporations have also engaged in an internationalization of their productive activities, organizing them under global value chains. Surprisingly, the intersections between the literature on financialisation and the literature on global value chain are still underdeveloped, although, for example, offshoring may also explain the decrease in investment of nonfinancial firms. This paper fills this gap using panel regressions for U.S. nonfinancial corporations between 1995 and 2011. We find evidence that both offshoring and financialisation are determinants to the decrease in investment and that financialisation occurs mainly for firms belonging to high offshoring sectors.