Panel: led by Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra and Dr Nahee Kang (King's College London)

Patient capital holds great allure as a crucial ingredient for economic development, as well as sustaining economic growth. In the context of the German hausbank, through dense relationships which afforded excellent access to information in order to underwrite risk effectively, the form of finance was crucial to the nation’s post-war recovery.

Comparative political economy scholarship, particularly work on the 'varieties of capitalism' has pinned patient capital as an attribute of one type of capitalist system – the long-term credit associated with coordinated market economies. Despite the allure of patient capital in practice (eg the British Business Bank’s Patient Capital Fund) and the penchant for engagement with patient capital by political economy scholars, the concept remains under conceptualised, and, as a result, difficult to identify in empirical contexts.

In this session, panelists will draw on their emerging political economy research to conceptualise its key attributes and identify it in empirical contexts.

*If you are external to King's, please contact the event organiser to let them know you are coming.

Organisers: Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra and Dr Nahee Kang (Political Economy & Institutions research group, King's College London)

This public panel discussion is part of a half-day workshop on ‘Patient capital in emerging economies’ (workshop from 10:00-15:00, same day). For more information on the workshop, contact Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra.

In this workshop, we strive to extend and interrogate such work by identifying the attributes of patient capital, as well as empirical examples of it, with an emphasis on its application in contemporary emerging economies. In doing so, we bring richer analytical tools for identifying patient capital given varying contexts, and we also contribute to the broader conceptualisation by going beyond time horizon as the defining characteristic.

We extend conceptual work on patient capital from the 2016 issue of Socio-Economic Review that asked, “where is patient capital and who supplies it?”. However, we strive to offer richer characterisation than the focus on time horizon, and to go beyond analysis in the European context.

Papers will lend to the conceptual work by offering empirical insights into the (developmental) state as a patient capitalist, while others will explore how and to what extent firms extend forms of patient capital.