IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v25y2011i4p611-626.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Theorizing financialization

Author

Listed:
  • Costas Lapavitsas

Abstract

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 capitalist profit have also changed accordingly.

Suggested Citation

  • Costas Lapavitsas, 2011. "Theorizing financialization," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 25(4), pages 611-626, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:25:y:2011:i:4:p:611-626
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wes.sagepub.com/content/25/4/611.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dünhaupt, Petra, 2016. "Financialization and the crises of capitalism," IPE Working Papers 67/2016, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    2. Veldman, Jeroen, 2019. "Inequality, Inc," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    3. Gary Slater & David A. Spencer, 2014. "Workplace relations, unemployment and finance-dominated capitalism," Review of Keynesian Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 2(2), pages 134-146, April.
    4. Engelbert Stockhammer & Collin Constantine & Severin Reissl, 2020. "Explaining the Euro crisis: current account imbalances, credit booms and economic policy in different economic paradigms," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 231-266, April.
    5. Barthold, Charles & Dunne, Stephen & Harvie, David, 2018. "Resisting financialisation with Deleuze and Guattari: The case of Occupy Wall Street," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 4-16.
    6. Veldman, Jeroen, 2018. "Inequality, Inc," MPRA Paper 86644, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Costas Lapavitsas & Ivan Mendieta-Muñoz, 2017. "Financialisation at a Watershed in the USA JEL Classification: B50, E10, E44, G20," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2017_10, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    8. Roberto Veneziani & Luca Zamparelli & Leila E. Davis, 2017. "Financialization And Investment: A Survey Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 1332-1358, December.
    9. Hanying Qi, 2019. "A New Literature Review on Financialization," Journal of Accounting, Business and Finance Research, Scientific Publishing Institute, vol. 7(2), pages 40-50.
    10. Park, Hyeng-Joon & Doucette, Jamie, 2016. "Financialization or Capitalization? Debating Capitalist Power in South Korea in the Context of Neoliberal Globalization," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 40(3), pages 533-554.
    11. Pauline Beau, 2016. "L'influence de la justice organisationnelle sur le stress : le cas du contrôle des performances individuelles dans les grands cabinets d'audit," Post-Print hal-01902416, HAL.
    12. Gregory Jackson, 2016. "Toward a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Institutional Change in Japanese Capitalism: Structural Transformations and Organizational Diversity," Working Papers halshs-01643921, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:25:y:2011:i:4:p:611-626. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.