Financialised Capitalism and Inequality : shareholder value-driven firms, marketised household balance sheets and bubbly financial markets

This chapter covers the relationship between financialisation and inequality by first providing a theoretical understanding of financialised capitalism and then discussing how the behaviour of shareholder value-driven firms and financialised households shape the dynamics of inequality in present day capitalism. Through data on financialised economies and households in ten high income countries we discuss financialisation’s quantitative properties. And then financialised firm behaviour is discussed by tracing the rise of neo-liberal agency theories that justify shareholder value maximisation strategies by managers and consequently legitimises the growth of the gap between CEO compensation and average wage which is the main driver of inequality in financialised capitalism