The financialization hypothesis (FH) is a popular leitmotiv which argues that the financial system conquers the commanding heights of the capitalist economy. It maintains that finance gained independence from productive-capital and began to dominate it. The FH bases this argument on several...

A number of important contributions to the political economy literature have argued that changes in the financial sector have been amongst the main reflections, or even the driving forces, of recent transformations of capitalism in the rich countries. This hypothesis has been referred to as...