Finance and societies

This book is about the social and cultural study of finance, of the markets and institutions used for fmancial transactions, and the trading of assets and risks. The financial system controls and manages credit; in contemporary societies, the ultimate users of real capital rely heavily on others (investors) to provide the funds with which to acquire the resources they need. Investors make the transfers of money to those seeking credit in the hope of reaping profits at later points in time; the debts the receivers of the funds incur are claims investors can make on future income and on economic output and development. Characteristically, these claims (which take the form of company shares, governments bonds, etc.) and their derivatives are marketed and traded onfinancial markets••••with the help of financial intermediaries (e.g. banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies) who package the deals, assume some of the risks, and facilitate the trading of claims and risks among market participants. The existence of such markets allows participants to sell claims and risks they no longer want, and to pursue additional profits through clever trading. Financial markets, then, are a major, if not the most important component of the credit mechanism in risk-based economies. Economists regard them as constituting an efficient mechanism that :fuIfi11s vital functions 01: and for, the financial system: for instance, they pool and transfer wealth for capital use, decrease the costs of finance (through the elimination of banks as direct lenders), and spread and control risks risk being more widely distributed when credit is obtained in financial markets through the splitting of shares and through derivative products that can be used for hedging risky investments (e.g. Merton and Bodie 1995: 4f, 13-15). In contemporary Westem societies, financial activities are a defining characteristic not only of the corporate economy, but also of politics, the welfure and social security system, and general culture. For example, the corporate economy has long depended on credit to finance production and investments. A Robinson Crusoe with nothing to invest could not hope to produce much. He would first have to invest his own time and labor in order to build the rudiments of a productive capital structure (Shapiro 1985: 77). As Susan Strange argues (1994: 30), if we had had to wait for profits to be accumulated there would have been none of the economic growth of the past decades in industry and agriculture. The state has long needed credit and borrowed vast amounts of money. From the seventeenth century onward, states systematically financed costly military interventions by issuing debt (government First publ.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2008

This survey reviews the literature on the political economy of financial structure, broadly defined to include the size of capital markets and banking systems as well as the distribution of access to external finance across firms. The theoretical literature on the institutional basis for financial development and the recent evidence suggests that unconstrained political power undermines financial accumulation. Even under limited government, unaccountable institutions lead to regulatory capture, favor connected interests, and undermine finance access and entry. Thus the degree of access to political rights by citizens thus strongly affects their access to finance. Finally, we review the recent literature on the time variation of financial development across democracies during the XX century.

Economic Sociology. European …, 2005

aim of the newsletter economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter provides information for scholars interested in economic sociology, with an emphasis on events and developments in Europe. The newsletter is driven by the idea of free access to information and open communication. contributions Please send contributions, suggestions and input to the editor. publishing information economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter is part of economic sociology_the european website, which is maintained by researchers and staff of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. The newsletter is published three times a year as a PDF and an HTML document. The PDF can be downloaded free of charge. Back issues are available on the website. subscription You can receive economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter via email. Please subscribe at http://econsoc.mpifg.de-> Newsletter-> Subscription editorial office Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies | Paulstr.

Review of Radical Political Economics, 2009

Work, Employment and Society, 2011

The crisis of 2007–9 has cast fresh light on the ascendancy of finance in recent years, a process that is often described as financialization. The concept of financialisation has emerged within Marxist political economy in an effort to relate booming finance to poorly performing production. Yet, there is no general agreement on what it means, as is shown in this article through a selective review of economic and sociological literature. The article puts forth an analysis of financialization that draws on classical Marxism while remaining mindful of the recent crisis. Financialization represents a systemic transformation of mature capitalist economies with three interrelated features. First, large corporations rely less on banks and have acquired financial capacities; second, banks have shifted their activities toward mediating in open financial markets and transacting with households; third, households have become increasingly involved in the operations of finance. The sources of ca...

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 1997

Revista Internacional De Sociologia, 2020

Financialisation is a structural and incomplete process of change in contemporary economies. The growth of the financial system in last few decades has been accompanied by an increasingly complex relationship between socio-economic actors and financial markets. In this paper we analyse the causes and consequences of financialisation regarding: an erosion of the capital-labour relationship; the rise of labour income inequality; and the marketization of daily life and social rights. We review the main conceptualizations of financialisation on various research sites corresponding to the main economic actors, that is: non-financial corporations; the state and individuals; and their complex relationship with financial markets. Our primary objective is to evaluate the contributions and limitations of financialisation studies in these research sites and to identify the main methodological challenges in conceptualising financialisation.