Financialization As Welfare

Providing an in-depth case study on the emergence of social impact investing in the UK, this book develops a new perspective on financialization processes that highlights the roles of non-financial actors. In contrast to the common view that impact investing gears finance toward the solution of social problems, the author analyzes how these investments create new problems and inequalities. To explain how social impact investing became popular in British social policy despite its unclear effectiveness, the author focuses on cooperative relations between institutional entrepreneurs from finance and various non-financial actors. Drawing on field theory, he shows how seemingly unrelated social transformations – such as HM Treasury's expanding role in public service reform – may act as resonance spaces for the spread of finance. Opening up a new perspective on financialization processes in the terrain of public policy, this book invites readers to refocus scholarship on capitalist dynamics to the meso-level. Based on this analysis, the author also proposes ways to transform social impact investing to increase its potential for reducing global inequalities.

Financialisation has become a widely discussed and debated term leading to a plurality of perspectives, but no fixed definition or single reading. This book presents a critical exploration and review of the current literature on financialisation, focusing on the financialisation of NFCs and its possible implications for the macroeconomic and financial stability of advanced countries. Starting from this critical analysis, it proposes some new readings of the process of financialisation, linking it directly, on the one hand, to the evolution of interest-bearing capital and the credit system, and, on the other hand, to the historical tendencies of monopoly capital towards financial arrangements to manage corporate control. Finally, a conceptual scheme for interpretation and a mathematical model of corporate portfolio choice is developed to explain how the tendency in developed countries to place growing shares of social surplus in speculative financial channels can contribute to their long-term real stagnation. The book also underlines the excessive attention usually being paid to some micro-epiphenomena that show a fallacy of composition at the macroeconomic level and can lead to some misunderstandings of the general trends in capitalist evolution. Moreover, some doubts are raised about the extent to which financialisation actually represents a change to the present regime of accumulation. The book targets all the scholars who are interested in better understanding whether financialisation constitutes a profound change in the functioning of capitalist economic systems and what effects it can produce in social welfare in the advanced countries.

This book critically addresses the model of social inclusion that prevailed in Brazil under the rule of the Workers Party from the early 2000s until 2015. It examines how the emergence of a mass consumer society proved insufficient, not only to overcome underdevelopment, but also to consolidate the comprehensive social protection system inherited from Brazil’s 1988 Constitution. By juxtaposing different theoretical frameworks, this book scrutinizes how the current finance-dominated capitalism has reshaped the role of social policy, away from rights-based decommodified benefits and towards further commodification. This constitutes the Brazilian paradox: how a center-left government has promoted and boosted financialization through a market incorporation strategy using credit as a lever for expanding financial inclusion. In so doing, it has pushed the subjection of social policy further into the logic of financial markets.

This book explores the role that coercion plays in the establishment and evolution of the public economy.

Beginning with an original historical vision of financialization in human history, this volume then continues with a rich set of contemporary ethnographic case studies from Europe, Asia and Africa. Authors explore the ways in which finance inserts itself into relationships of class and kinship, how it adapts to non-Western religious traditions, and how it reconfigures legal and ecological dimensions of social organization, and urban social relations in general. Central themes include the indebtedness of individuals and households, the impact of digital technologies, the struggle for housing, financial education, and political contestation.

How are hospitals, schools, GPs and social workers funded? How do the poor pay for their housing? ·[vbTab]Is the tax payer prepared to pay adequate pensions to the growing numbers of old people? Will we all have to work longer? ·[vbTab]Can western welfare states survive in an increasingly competitive world economy? These are some of the questions that the second edition of this best-selling textbook tries to answer. It begins by reviewing the range of ways in which basic human needs can be met and summarises in an accessible way the economic literature on why markets and even governments can fail in this respect. In a series of chapters "Understanding the finance of welfare" describes and assesses in detail the ways in which health care, personal social services, education, housing, pensions and social security are funded in the UK. In each case what happens in the UK is compared with the means used in other countries. Since demand always outruns supply, the book considers how these services are rationed and concludes by asking what future there is for the funding of western welfare states. Much has happened to the funding of social policy and the economy since the first edition of this book, especially in pensions and social care. New devolved assemblies have taken responsibility for setting social policy and their funding has become an issue. In response, much of the book has been revised and all the figures and tables have been updated. "Understanding the finance of welfare" has been designed to fit the needs of social policy student syllabuses where it has become an essential text. It is also important to students of public policy and economics and those training as teachers, medical students and social workers. But it will also be of interest to the general public because there is no more important political topic today than how social services are funded.

Financialization is one of the most innovative concepts to emerge in the field of political economy during the last three decades, although there is no agreement on what exactly it is. Profiting Without Producing puts forth a distinctive view defining financialization in terms of the fundamental conduct of non-financial enterprises, banks and households. Its most prominent feature is the rise of financial profit, in part extracted from households through financial expropriation. Financialized capitalism is also prone to crises, none greater than the gigantic turmoil that began in 2007. Using abundant empirical data, the book establishes the causes of the crisis and discusses the options broadly available for controlling finance.

Infrastructure and its effects on economic growth, social welfare, and sustainability receive a great deal of attention today. There is widespread agreement that infrastructure is a key dimension of global development and that its impact reaches deep into the broader economy with important and multifaceted implications for social progress. At the same time, infrastructure finance is among the most complex and challenging areas in the global financial architecture. Ingo Walter, Professor Emeritus of Finance, Corporate Governance and Ethics at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and his team of experts tackle the issue by focussing on key findings backed by serious theoretical and empirical research. The result is a set of viable guideposts for researchers, policy-makers, students and anybody interested in the varied challenges of the contemporary economy.