Peer-reviewed articles 

2024: Imprinting the economy: the structural power of venture capital. EPA: Economy & Space. 56(2), 586-602.

Winner of Karl Polanyi Price of German Sociology Association (DGS)

Among Top 10 most read EPA papers 2022/23

This article analytically links asset management and the digital economy by analyzing the structural power of venture capital (VC) investors. Therefore, I propose the notion of imprinting, which describes how financial actors, enabled by their structural position, shape businesses according to their specific logic. Concretely, I argue that VCs’ logic is one of assetization, whereby VCs turn startups into assets for themselves and their capital providers. To do so, VCs seek hypergrowth, selecting only companies with the potential to grow fast and large and decouple financial value from business fundamentals. Instead of the threat of exit, VCs establish direct and indirect channels of control: legally, via preferred shareholder rights, board seats, and payout conditionality; and as participatory capital, offering operational advice and access to their network. The article contributes to a nuanced understanding of financial sector power in contemporary capitalism.

2023:  The limits of derisking. (Un)conditionality in the European green transformation. Competition and Change, 0(0).

This article analytically links asset management and the digital economy by analyzing the structural power of venture capital (VC) investors. Therefore, I propose the notion of imprinting, which describes how financial actors, enabled by their structural position, shape businesses according to their specific logic. Concretely, I argue that VCs’ logic is one of assetization, whereby VCs turn startups into assets for themselves and their capital providers. To do so, VCs seek hypergrowth, selecting only companies with the potential to grow fast and large and decouple financial value from business fundamentals. Instead of the threat of exit, VCs establish direct and indirect channels of control: legally, via preferred shareholder rights, board seats, and payout conditionality; and as participatory capital, offering operational advice and access to their network. The article contributes to a nuanced understanding of financial sector power in contemporary capitalism.

2023: Veni Vidi VC - The backend of the digital economy and its political making. Review of International Political Economy. 30(1), 229-251.

Winner of the Egon-Matzner-Award for Socio-Economics
Among Top 3 most read RIPE papers 2021/22 

Debates on the digital economy neglect its political and financial underpinnings. This article develops the theoretical framework of governing along the investment chain to grasp the backend of the digital economy, that is venture capital and its political underpinnings. Concretely, I focus on the European Investment Fund and how the European Commission uses it to govern along the investment chain into the digital economy. Therefore I conceptualize venture capital from a political economy perspective, situate the European Investment Fund in the European polity, and analyze transformations in the shape of the investment chains, risk-return distribution, and infrastructural power in three distinct periods. I show how in acts of crisis-led institutional innovation, the European Investment Fund has taken a central position in European venture capital investment chains, while skewing the risk-return relationship towards private markets and granting infrastructural power to venture capital funds. This dynamic inhibits the European Investment Fund from taking a progressive and proactive role in European venture capital markets.

Policy papers, chapters and commentaries

Gerber, C., Cooiman, F., Butollo, F., Krzywdzinski, M., Wandjo, D., Danyeli, M., Delicat, N., & Herzog, L. (2024). Digitalisierung und die Pandemie – aus der Krise lernen (Working Paper 35; Weizenbaum Series). Weizenbaum Institute. https://doi.org/10.34669/WI.WS/35

Herzog, L., Cooiman, F., Gerber, C. & Wandjo, D. (2024). COVID-19 and Platform Work in Germany: Lessons for the New Normal (Weizenbaum Series 34). https://doi.org/10.34669/WI.WS/34

Cooiman, F./ Niebler V. (2023). Spekulative Konflikte - Zur strukturellen Macht Lohnabhängiger im finanzialisierten Kapitalismus. Oppelt M./ Blumenthal, F. (ed.). Digitalisierung von Gegenmacht. transcript Verlag.

Cooiman, F. (2023). Wagniskapital und die sozial-ökologische Transformation. Nachhaltigkeit wagen. Politische Ökologie, 173 (2), 56-61.

Cooiman, F. (2022). Auf der Suche nach dem analytischen Kern – Philipp Staab und der digitale Kapitalismus. Zeitschrift für theoretische Soziologie, 11 (2), 61-71.

Cooiman, F. (2021). Colonialism, capital, and ressentiment — book review of Joseph Vogl’s ’Capital and Ressentiment (2021)’. Finance & Society, 7(2), 152-157
(For German version see: Kolonialismus, Kapital und Ressentiment on Soziopolis)