ABSTRACT
Most analysts were astonished and bewildered by the crisis that emerged in the summer of 2007. Yet this crisis is perfectly in keeping with theories that study growth and its disruptions from a historical perspective. Financial innovations are the “great forgotten” of traditional economic analyses. And yet there is no reason why they should be treated any differently from technical, organizational, institutional, or medical innovations. On paper, finance can contribute to growth through several different mechanisms: via the transfer of savings from lenders to borrowers, the smoothing over time of investment and consumption profiles, or the transfer of risks. What is particular about financial innovations is that they result from private profit-seeking strategies, and the new financial products diffuse all the more quickly because their process of production is immaterial. This diffusion can have major repercussions on macroeconomic stability, because of the externalities 1 that characterize it.
