Financialization and Macroeconomics: The Impact on Social Welfare in Advanced Economies (Routledge Critical Studies in Finance and Stability)

Financialisation has become a widely discussed and debated term leading to a plurality of perspectives, but no fixed definition or single reading.This book presents a critical exploration and review of the current literature on financialisation, focusing on the financialisation of NFCs and its possible implications for the macroeconomic and financial stability of advanced countries.Starting from this critical analysis, it proposes some new readings of the process of financialisation, linking it directly, on the one hand, to the evolution of interest-bearing capital and the credit system, and, on the other hand, to the historical tendencies of monopoly capital towards financial arrangements to manage corporate control.Finally, a conceptual scheme for interpretation and a mathematical model of corporate portfolio choice is developed to explain how the tendency in developed countries to place growing shares of social surplus in speculative financial channels can contribute to their long-t