Financial Exclusion via a Minskyan Bridge

In the past three decades the financial sectors in virtually every nation have been integrated into global finance, apparently expanding choice for domestic firms and residents from strictly local to global options. Paradoxically, however, this increasing openness has been paralleled by rising concerns among activists and social scientists about financial exclusion. Further, the period of financial globalisation has been accompanied by increasingly frequent, and ever more profound, financial crises. So the current period of financial globalisation has been linked with both more frequent financial crises and increasing levels of financial exclusion. The former occurs at the level of aggregates and nation-states, the latter at the level of regions and households. The link between financial globalisation and crisis has been extensively debated. But that between financial globalisation (and crisis) and financial exclusion has received virtually no attention. This can be traced to two factors. First, the dispute over financial globalisation and crisis has taken place almost exclusively among economists, on economists’ theoretical turf. They have conducted a dense, sustained debate at the macro level without ever tapping the micro level at which financial exclusion occurs. Second, most studies of financial exclusion have been done in geography and urban sociology. Because of the virtual absence of exchanges between these fields and economics, opportunities for creative interdisciplinary cross-talk have been missed.1