ABSTRACT

The financial sector has grown substantially over the past few decades, and done so in terms of its economic, political and social importance. using the definition provided by Epstein (2005: 3), “financialization means the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of domestic and international economies”, this can be viewed as a process of financialization. The term financialization is used in a range of social sciences (though not usually mainstream economics) and in a range of ways. van der zwan (2014: 101-102), for example, views financialization in three dimensions:

1 financialization as a regime of accumulation; 2 financialization of the modern corporation (emergence of shareholder value

as the main guiding principle of corporate behavior); and 3 the financialization of the everyday (the diverse ways in which finance is

grounded in practices of everyday life).