Financialization and the New Swedish Model

(sv. Finansialiseringen och den nya svenska modellen) Associate professor Markus Kallifatides and Claes Belfrage, University of Liverpool.

The rapid growth of the financial system and its dominance over the non-financial economy has given rise to ample re-regulation on a national and supernational level, across the globe. This "financialisation" is a process in which the economy is increasingly shaped by the practical logics and dynamics of financial markets.

In the project, knowledge of policy relevance is sought through empirical study of the relationship between the non-financial and the financial sectors of the economy. The overarching question concerns the stability and sustainability of the finance-dominated economy, where the Swedish economy serves as a case of critical importance to a general understanding of the finance-dominated economy.

The starting point is that drivers of and preconditions for economic growth in the Swedish economy need to be conceptualized, measured and modelled in terms of investment patters and actors logic of action. What politico-economic structures and strategies enable and constrain economic policy-making is to be studied through investigations of the newly established Council for Financial Stability and the control structures in Swedish industry. Together these investigations will nourish an interdisciplinary understanding of the conditions for an effective macro regulation of the economy.