Financialization and growth models

The concept of financialization is used to refer to the increasing power of financial capital since the 1980s. Although this concept refers to mechanisms as old as capitalism, the neoliberal policies of the last decades have led to unprecedented weight of markets, institutions and financial motives in the world economy.

The process of financialization has significantly influenced the growth patterns in developed economies during recent decades, explaining the fragile rate of investment, high levels of unemployment, external imbalances or increase inequalities in the distribution of income. However, the particular form that has adopted in each country the process of financial deregulation, patterns of trade specialization, credit expansion or wage restraint has resulted in different „varieties of financialisation“. More