ANALYSIS OF THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE DEFINITION OF THE FINANCIALIZATION CONCEPT

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the evolution of approaches in foreign and domestic economic literature to the phenomenon of financialization and its nature. The main manifestations of this phenomenon were identified at the micro (shift in corporate governance goals and investors structure, changes in economic agents’ income accumulation channels, levels of their borrowing from the financial sector), meso (change in segmental, subjective structure of the financial market, its level of international integration, resilience to shocks, emergence of new financial instruments) and macro level (change in functional income distribution, sectoral structure of the national economy and in the level of its propensity to financial and economic crises). It is concluded that the most common macroeconomic indicators that can evaluate and measure level of financialization are a share of profit from financial activities in a total amount of profit generated by a national economy, a share of debt to a gross domestic product and a share that belongs to the financial, insurance and real estate sectors in total national income. The essence of value-oriented management of the company and financial capitalism under which companies are considered as assets to be bought and sold in order to maximize profits through financial strategies are revealed as a financialization in the narrow sense (financialization of a corporate sector). The existing classifications of approaches to the nature of financialization in economics were considered in the article, their main shortcomings were identified and own concept of systematization of approaches to the genesis of this phenomenon was formed. It is determined that most economists consider financialization to be a natural transformation process that emerged in the late twentieth century and on a par with globalization and economic liberalization led to shifts in the structure and operating of the financial market, changes in nonfinancial corporations’ behavior and deep adjustments in the economic policy of governments that put emphasis on the regulation of financial activities of all economic agents.