Tides of financialization : Long-run changes in private debt levels, investment and the profit share in advanced capitalism

• Financialization is generally described as a trend occurring in the World economy since the late 1970s/early 1980s, but several scholars note that financialization is a historically recurrent phenomenon. Phases of financialization can be described as tides influenced by laissez-faire policy and collective intervention, most often via governments. By looking at three variables central to financialization – private debt levels, inequality and investment – this study finds that the finance-dominated capitalism in advanced economies between the Long depression, ending in the 1890s, and the Great depression in the early 1930s was similar to the current era of financialization: Rising inequality bred a higher debt-to-GDP ratio during both periods of financialization, mostly via larger collaterals and larger loanable funds. But whereas recent financialization, indicated by a rising debt-to-GDP ratio, has been associated with a declining investment-to-GDP ratio, financialization in the early 20th Century was positively associated with investment, manifest in the Second industrial revolution. During the “de-financialized” period after World War Two, inequality was neither associated with investment nor with private debt levels. Rather, macroeconomic policy reorientation and government management of financial markets led to a positive association between investment and private credit. The present study considers advanced capitalism as a totality rather than each country individually, since global capital flows play a crucial role during eras of financialization. A special focus is on institutional changes in the leading capitalist countries – The United States, Great Britain, Germany, France and Japan. The study also considers the special status of China in the World capitalist system. The coverage of advanced capitalist country GDP is about 75 per cent for the first era of financialization in 1896–1931, close to 90 per cent for the de-financialized era in 1946–1973, and almost 100 per cent for the recent period of financialization in 1983–2016. The dating of the three periods is based on available data and on established periodization by scholars in the fields of financialization, regulation theory and macroeconomic policy regimes. The conclusions are supported by cointegration tests, vector error correction models and impulse-response functions.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Ekonomisk historia (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economic History (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Inequality

debt

financialization

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)