SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Especially after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8, financialisation has become a buzzword across the social sciences over the past two decades, with the notable exception of mainstream economics. With heterodox political economy taking the lead, scholarship has demonstrated the negative effects of financialisation on economic and social development, with initial analyses for developed countries being extended to developing and emerging economies. Spectacular growth of volume and varieties of financial assets has been most usually associated with short-termism for immediate speculative gains. However, the growing weight of studies has increasingly shown that financialisation is not only global in character but, in conjunction with neoliberalisation, also exhibits differerentiated and complex incidence and corresponding effects, with bursts of economic activity as well as constraints. This suggests that financialisation, whilst characteristic of the contemporary global economy with corresponding effects on individual national economies, should be considered to be variegated and not homogenising, in general as well as within the context of development.