Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets, and Governance Workshop on next Tuesday, 11/8, 4:30-6PM, in Social Science Research Building classroom 401.
Youn Ki
Assistant Professor, Political Science, Miami University
Sectoral Goals, Shared Means: The Origins of the Rise of Finance in the United States
Discussant: Ji Xue
PhD Student, Political Science, University of Chicago
Abstract: This study examines the origins of the financialization that has taken place in the United States over the past half-century. Analysts have overlooked the role of industrial firms in this transition by positing converging interests among capitalists. Alternatively, I argue that large U.S. industrial firms and related class dynamics played important roles in the rise of finance in the United States. This study finds that industrialists’ preferences toward financial policies were essential to the formation of different coalitions that affected policy orientation. In the early postwar years, industrialists aligned with labor, providing strong support for the restrictive financial regime. However, as they tried to restore industrial profits in the 1970s by expanding abroad and reducing labor cost, they cooperated with financiers to advance liberal financial policies, which created economic conditions conducive to financial expansion. As such, my research stresses that distinctive sectoral goals but shared means among capitalists led to American financialization.  Using original archival evidence, I investigate how the restrictive postwar financial regime gave way to a new liberal one.
Questions about the workshop or accessibility concerns can be addressed to yanivr {at} uchicago {dot} edu