Financialization of Capitalism

Abstract

The significant growth in financial market activity since the 1980s has demanded the attention of political economists and, increasingly, sociologists, who have developed a conceptualization of global economic change as the financialization of capitalism. Resting on early political economy work, the interpretation of economic change as financialization has been bolstered by the global financial crisis and has developed into a broad‐reaching critique of social, political, and economic aspects of structural shifts in the global economy. The understanding of economic change as the financialization of capitalism ties the growth of the financial sector in to declining economic investment, labor m..