This paper explores the role of housing in households’ increasing financial activities. First, I build on quantitative work on the growth of housing related debt across Europe carried out under WP5 by presenting data on rates of homeownership, levels and types of mortgage debt, and house...

The financial system is a private-public partnership coming from government ceding the right to produce means of payment with the related permission on leveraged lending services, against the acceptance of rules designed to ensure stability for both individual institutions and the financial...

The paper is focused on the role of finance in the context of the implementation of industrial along the lines of industrial strategy. It argues that there is not a shortage of savings for the funding of investment, and that attention should focus on the direction of savings in ways compatible...

The almost consensual view on the global financial crisis is that it should be attributed to massive regulatory failure. Regulation is either argued to have failed in constraining an inherently instable financial system or to have provoked the crisis by means of inappropriate regulatory changes....

There is no doubt that the shadow banking system played an important role in the global financial crisis. What is in question is whether it played a causal or merely amplifying role. This paper argues in favour of the latter. Focusing specially on the process of the production of CDOs through...

This paper analyses the monetary transmission mechanism for France over the period 1999-2012 through two of its main channels: the interest rate channel and the bank lending channel. It also focuses on the impact of the recent financial crisis on the pass-through to interest rates and credit...

Six great trends have characterized the evolution of mature capitalist economies in the recent decades: 1. successful efforts to lower inflation from the levels of the 1970s; 2. Real growth significantly lower as compared to early post-WW2 decades; 3. a greater frequency in financial instability...

This paper reviews recent arguments put forward by international and national agencies committed to the advancement of financial education programmes. It shows the extent to which this commitment is symptomatic of financialised contemporary capitalist societies that have promoted the steady...

The aim of this document is twofold: first, to provide a critical survey of the European Central Bank (ECB hereafter) official documents concerning the process of financial integration in the Euro area; second, to offer an outline of the recent developments in the actual policies adopted by the...