Introduction: Finance and Financialisation in a Global World

The growing economic weight and role of finance with regard to companies and, more broadly, society at large characterises the phenomenon of financialisation with which financial capitalism is associated. The economic, managerial and sociological literature underscores how the financial system subordinates all the different sections of society by imposing its logic and capturing the bulk of the economic rent (Chesnais, 1996; Dore, 2008; Epstein, 2005; Fine, 2012; Krippner, 2005; Lemoine & Ravelli, 2017).

Van der Zwan (2014) distinguishes between three approaches in the literatures on financialisation, depending on whether the phenomenon is studied as a new accumulation regime, as a redistribution process through the imposition of shareholder value creation or through an incursion of financial norms into the daily lives of individuals.