Special Issue Financial Markets, Financialisation and the Macroeconomy. Editorial to the Special Issue

Hein, Eckhard; Niechoj, Torsten; Stockhammer, Engelbert Article Special Issue Financial Markets, Financialisation and the Macroeconomy. Editorial to the Special Issue Intervention. European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies Provided in Cooperation with: Edward Elgar Publishing Suggested Citation: Hein, Eckhard; Niechoj, Torsten; Stockhammer, Engelbert (2008) : Special Issue Financial Markets, Financialisation and the Macroeconomy. Editorial to the Special Issue, Intervention. European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies, ISSN 2195-3376, MetropolisVerlag, Marburg, Vol. 05, Iss. 2, pp. 329-330, https://doi.org/10.4337/ejeep.2008.02.11 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/277139 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Special Issue Financial Markets, Financialisation and the Macroeconomy Editorial to the Special Issue Eckhard Hein*, Torsten Niechoj** and Engelbert Stockhammer*** During the recent decades the fi nancial sectors of developed and developing countries as well as global fi nancial relations have changed remarkably.1 Th e overall importance of fi - nancial factors for real investment and growth of non-fi nancial business has risen, as has the fi nancial activity of non-fi nancial corporations. Power relations between shareholders in joint stock companies, management, and labourers seem to have changed. Th e development of new fi nancial instruments, together with the booms in stock market and real estate prices, has increased the potential for wealth-based and debt-fi nanced consumption. As a result of these developments fi nancial fragility (Minsky 1977) has increased. Th e current fi nancial turbulences, generated by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the USA and spreading over international fi nancial markets since summer 2007, may be seen as a result of this increased fragility. Finally, global fi nancial relations and conditions have changed with the rapid development in Asia and the associated current account surpluses, in particular in China but also in Japan. Th e papers in this special issue address some of the problems related to these developments. Th ey were originally presented at the 11th conference of the Research Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies on »Finance-led Capitalism? Macroeconomic Eff ects of Changes in the Financial Sector« in October 2007 in Berlin. Further papers from * Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) at Hans Boeckler Foundation, Duesseldorf, and Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. ** Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) at Hans Boeckler Foundation, Duesseldorf, and Georg August University Goettingen. *** Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. 1 See for example the overview in Eatwell and Taylor (2000) for an early analysis, Krippner (2005) and the contributions in Epstein (2005) for a detailed treatment of the development in the U.S. and other countries, van Treeck et al. (2007) for a comparison of the macroeconomics of ›fi nancialisation‹ in the USA and Germany, and Stockhammer (2008) for the development in Europe. © INTERVENTION 5 (2), 2008, 329 – 330 330 Intervention. European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies the conference covering a broader area will be published in Hein et al. (2008). Financial support by the Hans Boeckler Foundation for the conference and these publications is gratefully acknowledged. Moreover, we would like to thank both the contributors to this special issue for their cooperation and the referees for their instructive and punctual reports. Special thanks go to Sebastian Türk for his attentive assistance in the editing process. References Eatwell, J., Taylor, L. (2000): Global fi nance at risk, Cambridge/UK: Polity Press. Epstein, G.A. (ed.) (2005): Financialization in the world economy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Hein, E., Niechoj, T., Spahn, P., Truger, A. (eds.) (2008): Finance-led capitalism? Macroeconomic eff ects of changes in the fi nancial sector, Marburg: Metropolis, forthcoming. Krippner, G.R. (2005): Th e fi nancialization of the American economy, Socio-Economic Review, 3, 173–208. Minsky, H.P. (1977): Th e fi nancial instability hypothesis, Challenge, March/April: 20–27. Stockhammer, E. (2008): Some stylized facts on the fi nance-dominated accumulation regime, Competition and Change, 12(2), 189–207. Van Treeck, T., Hein, E., Dünhaupt, P. (2007): Finanzsystem und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung: neuere Tendenzen in den USA und in Deutschland, Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) at Hans Boeckler Foundation, IMK Studies, No. 5/2007.