Abstract

After the 1980s, the neo-liberal economic policies of the Washington Consensus paradigm revealed by the market mechanism have become the dominant system. The globalization process of the world economy and the policies highlighted the concept of financialization. The balance shifted from production to finance in the financialization process and financial capital accumulation has become dominant and, local markets were opened to international capital flows. Thus the financial markets, the size of the institutions and processes have shown a significant increase in the entire world, particularly in the developed countries. This article aims to empirically explore the effects of financialization in the developed countries. For this purpose, current data were used in the paper to analyze these effects. In the paper, the process of financialization in the G8 countries was examined using data for a period of 19 years (1990–2008). The effects of financialization on GDP and employment have been analyzed by using panel data models. Findings suggest that there are important impacts of financial sector on GDP and total employment.

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