IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/psl/pslqrr/201843.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How much does finance benefit society?

Author

Listed:
  • Giancarlo Bertocco

    (University of Insubria)

  • Andrea Kalajzic

Abstract

The financial crisis that erupted in 2007 has generated feelings of deep aversion towards finance among the public. Zingales (2015) urges the economics profession not to underestimate these feelings, noting that economists tend to overestimate the benefits of finance and to ignore that the 'best form of finance' is accompanied by a 'bad type of finance'. The problem with these statements is that the macroeconomic theory elaborated over the last decades is unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the coexistence of these two forms of finance. The aim of this work is to present a sound explanation of the distinction between good and bad finance, based on: i) Keynes's distinction between enterprise and speculation; ii) Schumpeter analysis of the role of bank money in a capitalist economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Giancarlo Bertocco & Andrea Kalajzic, 2018. "How much does finance benefit society?," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 71(287), pages 419-437.
    • Handle: RePEc:psl:pslqrr:2018:43
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ojs.uniroma1.it/index.php/PSLQuarterlyReview/article/view/14067/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009. "Varieties of Crises and Their Dates," Introductory Chapters, in: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press.
    2. Ben S. Bernanke, 2012. "Some Reflections on the Crisis and the Policy Response : a speech at the Russell Sage Foundation and The Century Foundation Conference on \"Rethinking Finance,\" New York, New York, April 13," Speech 639, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    3. Anat Admati & Martin Hellwig, 2013. "The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9929.
    4. Reinhart, Karmen & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2009. ""This time is different": panorama of eight centuries of financial crises," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 77-114, March.
    5. Gorton, Gary B., 2012. "Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don't See Them Coming," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199922901.
    6. Reinhart, Carmen & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2009. "This Time It’s Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly-Preface," MPRA Paper 17451, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Eckhard Hein, 2012. "The Macroeconomics of Finance-Dominated Capitalism – and its Crisis," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14931.
    8. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2010. "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9111.
    9. Leopoldo Fergusson, 2006. "Institutions for Financial Development: What are they and where do they come from?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 27-70, February.
    10. Reinhart, Carmen & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2009. "This Time It’s Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly-Chapter 1," MPRA Paper 17452, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Eckhard Hein & Daniel Detzer & Nina Dodig (ed.), 2015. "The Demise of Finance-dominated Capitalism," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 16281.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefano Di Bucchianico, 2020. "A note on financialization from a Classical-Keynesian standpoint," Department of Economics University of Siena 824, Department of Economics, University of Siena.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Pagano, 2014. "Dealing with Financial Crises: How Much Help from Research?," CSEF Working Papers 361, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    2. Ozlem Akin & José M Marín & José-Luis Peydró, 2020. "Anticipating the financial crisis: evidence from insider trading in banks," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 35(102), pages 213-267.
    3. Marcus Miller & Lei Zhang, 2013. "The Invisible Hand And The Banking Trade: Seigniorage, Risk-Shifting, And More," Brussels Economic Review, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles, vol. 56(3-4), pages 365-388.
    4. Michael G. Jacobides, 2015. "What drove the financial crisis? Structuring our historical understanding of a predictable evolutionary disaster," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(5), pages 716-735, July.
    5. Aikman, David & Haldane, Andrew & Hinterschweiger, Marc & Kapadia, Sujit, 2018. "Rethinking financial stability," Bank of England working papers 712, Bank of England.
    6. Clément Fontan & François Claveau & Peter Dietsch, 2016. "Central banking and inequalities," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 15(4), pages 319-357, November.
    7. Dewatripont, Mathias, 2014. "European banking: Bailout, bail-in and state aid control," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 37-43.
    8. Richard S. Grossman & Hugh Rockoff, 2015. "Fighting the Last War: economists on the lender of last resort," Departmental Working Papers 201515, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    9. John Nkwoma Inekwe, 2019. "The exploration of economic crises: parameter uncertainty and predictive ability," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 66(2), pages 290-313, May.
    10. T.J. Pempel, 2012. "Global Financial Regulation: G2 or G20?," Chapters, in: Jehoon Park & T. J. Pempel & Geng Xiao (ed.), Asian Responses to the Global Financial Crisis, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Giraud, Gaël & Grasselli, Matheus, 2021. "Household debt: The missing link between inequality and secular stagnation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 901-927.
    12. F. Wang & Ting Zhang, 2014. "Financial Crisis and Credit Crunch in the Housing Market," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 256-276, August.
    13. Timothy C. Irwin, 2016. "Getting the Dog to Bark: Disclosing Fiscal Risks from the Financial Sector," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(02), pages 1-17, June.
    14. Alan Kirman, 2016. "Complexity and Economic Policy: A Paradigm Shift or a Change in Perspective? A Review Essay on David Colander and Roland Kupers's Complexity and the Art of Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(2), pages 534-572, June.
    15. Michael D. Bordo, 2017. "An Historical Perspective on the Quest for Financial Stability and the Monetary Policy Regime," Economics Working Papers 17108, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
    16. Demosthenes Tambakis, 2021. "A Markov chain measure of systemic banking crisis frequency," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(16), pages 1351-1356, September.
    17. Jenter, Dirk & Aldunate, Felipe & Korteweg, Arthur & Koudijs, Peter, 2021. "Shareholder Liability and Bank Failure," CEPR Discussion Papers 16309, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Ashraf, Badar Nadeem, 2017. "Political institutions and bank risk-taking behavior," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 13-35.
    19. Farm, Ante, 2017. "Basic Monetary Economics," Working Paper Series 8/2017, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    20. Martin Wolf, 2014. "How the Financial Crisis Changed Our World," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(3), pages 286-303, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    good finance; bad finance; enterprise; speculation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:psl:pslqrr:2018:43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Carlo D'Ippoliti (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.economiacivile.it .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.