Finance and Democracy

This book is an extension of the author's last book (Crisis and Sustainability: The Delusion of Free Markets, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and sheds light on the evolution of the financial system after the 2007/08 crisis and on changes and developments in the regulatory framework that have taken place concurrently over the last ten years. The book’s central theme addresses the neoliberal philosophy of financial regulation and, in particular, the role of self-regulating markets in the finance sector and how this has affected incentives and behaviour within the finance sector. The author contends that neoliberal maxims have led us to believe that market-based finance is superior to, and safer than, a more rules-based regulatory regime for the sector, and then explains that experience suggests otherwise. The huge expansion of ‘financialization’ in the developed economies over the last two decades has greatly magnified the risks emanating from the impact of highly leveraged, risk averse, under-regulated finance on other sectors of these economies. The author concludes that financial institutions need to be encouraged to operate within a more socially responsible matrix that facilitates and promotes long-term economic growth coupled with social stability. 

Alessandro Vercelli is former Head of the Institute of Economics at the University of Siena, Italy, where he was Professor of Political Economy. He is also a former Vice-President of the International Economic Association (IEA, 2005-2008) and a Life Member of Clare Hall (University of Cambridge, UK). He has written books and articles in the fields of economic policy, environmental and ecological economics, sustainability and economic methodology. His books include Teoria della Struttura Economica Capitalistica, Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Torino, 1973; Methodological Foundations of Macroeconomics. Keynes and Lucas, Cambridge University Press, 1991; Global Sustainability. Social and Environmental Conditions (with Simone Borghesi) Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; Crisis and Sustainability. The Delusion of Free Markets, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. He has co-edited various books including: with R. Goodwin e M. Krüger, 1984, Nonlinear Models of Fluctuating Growth, Springer; with N. Dimitri, 1992, Macroeconomics: A Survey of Research Strategies, Oxford University Press; with G. Chichilnisky e J. Heal, 1997, Sustainability: Dynamics and Uncertainty, Dordrecht: Kluwer; with B. Agarwal, 2005, Psychology, Rationality and Economic Behaviour: Challenging Standard Assumptions, IEA series, Palgrave Macmillan; with R. Dimand and R. Mundell, 2010, Keynes’ General Theory after Seventy Years, Palgrave Macmillan.