Post-Keynesian approaches

This chapter provides a survey of the main features of the literature on financialisation produced in the context of the post-Keynesian theoretical approaches and critically analyses the origin and subsequent evolutions of this concept, pointing out their strengths and weaknesses. It is also pointed out that some of these analyses, while by and large plausible at the firm level, show a fallacy of composition when transposed to the macroeconomic level to explain the effects of financialisation on real aggregate investment. In addition, the idea of the shareholder revolution and the role of some new financial intermediaries, such as mutual and pension funds, which, according to many post-Keynesian authors, are closely linked to the financialisation of non-financial corporations (NFCs), are discussed. Finally, the notion of managerial revolution, which is often opposed to the shareholder revolution in the current post-Keynesian literature, is criticised and the thesis that NFCs are the main actors of their own financialisation is proposed.