ABSTRACT

The ‘financialisation’ of the economy is considered a key phenomenon of our time, but we lack large-scale empirical evidence of it. Has financialisation in the non-financial corporate sector really taken off in recent decades? To answer this question, I marshal data on all available publicly traded corporations in the largest 37 countries from 1991 to 2017. While there has been a decline in ‘real’ capital accumulation, I do not find firms are substituting tangible for financial investment. Financial income and financial asset shares have declined over time. Only by one measure – shareholder payouts – is there significant growth. To the extent we do see financialisation behaviour, it is overwhelmingly accounted for by very large and internationalised firms. In light of these findings, I argue that non-financial sector financialisation is connected to changes in the global production process which allows a small number of powerful firms to recycle surplus profits into financial capital.

摘要

经济的“金融化”被认为是我们这个时代的一个关键现象，但我们缺乏大规模的经验证据。近几十年来，非金融企业部门的金融化真的起飞了吗？为了回答这个问题，我整理了 1991 年至 2017 年间最大的 37 个国家/地区所有可用上市公司的数据。虽然“实际”资本积累有所下降，但我没有发现公司正在用有形的资金替代金融投资。随着时间的推移，金融收入和金融资产份额有所下降。只有通过一种衡量标准——股东派息——才会有显着的增长。就我们确实看到的金融化行为而言，绝大多数是非常大的国际化公司。鉴于这些发现，