Financialisation varied: a comparative analysis of advanced economies

Abstract

Financialisation remains an unclear term in social science. We deploy a Marxist framework to establish that financialisation represents a structural transformation of advanced capitalist economies with three characteristic tendencies: non-financial enterprises have acquired capacity to engage in financial activities independently; banks have turned to mediating transactions in open markets as well as lending to households; and households have been drawn into the formal financial system. Nonetheless, despite common underlying tendencies, both the form and the content taken by financialisation vary according to institutional, historical and political conditions in each country. We use data from the USA, the UK, Japan, Germany and France to establish both the underlying tendencies and the specific forms of financialisation.