ABSTRACT
In recent decades, there have been many discussions on neoliberalism, not only in academic research, but in the media and within political debates. These discussions tend to treat specific phenomena within government policies or in economic ideas and label them “neoliberal” or as “neoliberalism.” Many of these discussions miss an analysis of the fundamental dynamics of (re)producing neoliberalism. In this chapter, I focus on one of these fundamental dynamics, which I call “financialization.” The term financialization has recently been popularized by authors such as Kevin Phillips (2006) in the US. But “financialization” has a number of different meanings, depending on who is using it. In academia, a strict use of the term is preferred, although it can be discussed at a number of distinct levels. Some define financialization at the firm level as the increasing share of profits from financial investment in non-financial corporations (Crotty 2003). This may be described as convergence in business activities between financial and nonfinancial firms. For others, financialization is used to indicate changes at the level of the national economy. For example, some studies define financialization as the increasing share occupied by the financial sector in a national economy (Krippner 2005).
