From Merlin to Oz
The strange case of failed lending targets in the UK
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12315930 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Huw Macartney (0000-0002-9829-1162, University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 820-846 |
| Publication date | 2013-10-31 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Review of International Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0969-2290 • E-ISSN: 1466-4526 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09692290.2013.828647 |
| OpenAlex | W2042194372 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 26 |
As a response to the crisis in the British banking system and reduced lending, the British government established Project Merlin, a series of lending targets aimed at boosting lending to the British economy, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular. Given the economic importance of the targets, however, this paper questions why the Merlin agreements were so ineffective. Three explanations are given: first, in light of the challenges in accessing wholesale funding for the largest UK-owned banks, there was a lack of capacity and incentive to lend more; second, the lack of decisive intervention by the British state to compel banks to lend was also a determinant; third, though, I argue that boosting actual lending figures was not the primary aim of Project Merlin. Instead, the targets were performative, rather than substantive. I argue that these three explanations have important implications for the varieties of capitalism (VoC) debate and the economic and political economic literature on foreign versus domestic bank ownership. To the first literature, the article explains the degree to which politics underpins the structure of even the UK's purportedly liberal market economy (LME), whilst to the second, it explores the limitations to political control over even domestically-owned banks
Capitalism · Economic interventionism · Economics · Economy · Excellence · Incentive · Investment banking · Market economy · Performative utterance · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Social Policy and Reform Studies · Finance
After the Great ComplacenceFinancial Crisis and the Politics of Reform
The State in Capitalist Society
State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism
Governments, Markets, and Growth
Varieties of Capitalism
Depoliticisation
Crisis, Ideas, and Economic Policy-making in Britain during the 1970s Stagflation
The Company of Strangers
The Politics of Liberal Financial Governance and the Gold Standard
French capitalism under stress
Central and East European Bank Responses to the Financial ‘Crisis’
The Lost Legitimacy
Wasting a Crisis? Democracy and Markets in Britain after 2007
Crisis for the State or Crisis of the State
The World Bank Annual Report 2008
Supporting the City
Economic patriotism
Pathology Without Crisis? The Strange Demise of the Anglo-Liberal Growth Model
Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective
Misrule of experts? The financial crisis as elite debacle
| Citations per year | 0.54 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2021 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |