ABSTRACT
There is a general consensus both in mainstream and heterodox economics that the role of finance has increased in contemporary capitalist societies since the 1980s, discussions further fuelled by the 2007 financial meltdown. While mainstream economic approaches have attempted to reconsider the concepts of market efficiency and/or financial risk (for instance, see Blinder, Lo and Solow, 2012 and Shin, 2010), heterodox studies have relied on the term financialization to explain how changes in modern finance have become core elements in the transformations of contemporary capitalism. Financialization is one of the most widely used terms in heterodox studies. Coming up with a single and coherent definition is impossible since there is no definition which can be theoretically neutral or unbiased (see the introductory chapter by Mader, Mertens and Van der Zwan, in this volume). The success and the wide dissemination of the term comes thus at a price, as it has become imprecise, inexplicit, and quite often contradictory.
