Abstract
Financialization, the increasing influence of financial markets, actors, practices and measurements in political, economic and social life, continues to draw attention from scholars from diverse academic fields. Contributing to the literatures on household financialization, financial market institutionalization and the financialization of nature, this dissertation explores the underlying factors that enabled and facilitated the financialization of Sweden’s growth model. Drawing from the Regulation Approach and heterodox economics, it analyzes how covered bonds, an overlooked topic in financialization studies, have contributed to “de-risking” European financial markets, decelerated the spread of securitization, and enabled an increase in mortgage lending, house price inflation and household indebtedness, especially in Sweden.
Zooming in on the Nordic forest industry, the dissertation furthermore elaborates on the differential impact of financialization on non-financial firms. Amid the entrance of shareholder value ideology, it shows how innovation was undermined through R&D downsizing while dividends have been increased to shareholders at labor’s expense. Meanwhile, profitability has been supported by appreciating forest assets that are increasingly treated as a new financial asset class by the financial sector. In addition, providing data on welfare retrenchment, financialization indicators and corporate governance, while applying a Gramscian Regulation Approach, the dissertation analyzes the structural pressures and the formation of a particular neoliberal hegemony that have shaped the financialization of Sweden’s previously universal welfare sector.
Whereas financial markets have been seen as crucial for growth and employment, the dissertation furthermore documents how financial deepening has mainly resulted in increased mortgage lending, while public sector debt has increasingly been perceived as economically detrimental by policymakers. The dissertation finalizes with some stylized facts of financialization in small Western economies and how they relate to Sweden.