{"title":"Financial production and the subprime mortgage crisis.","authors":"Daniele Tori, Eugenio Caverzasi, Mauro Gallegati","doi":"10.1007/s00191-023-00812-y","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The causes of the 2007-8 subprime crisis continue to be the subject of much debate, with explanations ranging from de-regulation and fraudulent behavior to global imbalances and rising inequality. However, a comprehensive analysis of the endogenous forces that made the crisis inevitable has yet to be presented. This paper offers a 'structural' interpretation of the crisis by synthesising insights from conventional financial economics and the Minskyian and Schumpeterian literature. While highlighting the innovative character of US financial firms evolving from credit providers to <i>producers</i> of financial commodities, we stress the key features of their path towards financial fragility. We contend that financial institutions were able to achieve progressively unsustainable positions due to the 'enforced indebtedness' of US households, which played a functional, albeit secondary, role in the development of the crisis.</p>","PeriodicalId":47757,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Evolutionary Economics","volume":" ","pages":"1-31"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009346/pdf/","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Evolutionary Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-023-00812-y","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
The causes of the 2007-8 subprime crisis continue to be the subject of much debate, with explanations ranging from de-regulation and fraudulent behavior to global imbalances and rising inequality. However, a comprehensive analysis of the endogenous forces that made the crisis inevitable has yet to be presented. This paper offers a 'structural' interpretation of the crisis by synthesising insights from conventional financial economics and the Minskyian and Schumpeterian literature. While highlighting the innovative character of US financial firms evolving from credit providers to producers of financial commodities, we stress the key features of their path towards financial fragility. We contend that financial institutions were able to achieve progressively unsustainable positions due to the 'enforced indebtedness' of US households, which played a functional, albeit secondary, role in the development of the crisis.
期刊介绍:
The journal aims to provide an international forum for a new approach to economics. Following the tradition of Joseph A. Schumpeter, it is designed to focus on original research with an evolutionary conception of the economy. The journal will publish articles with a strong emphasis on dynamics, changing structures (including technologies, institutions, beliefs and behaviours) and disequilibrium processes with an evolutionary perspective (innovation, selection, imitation, etc.). It favours interdisciplinary analysis and is devoted to theoretical, methodological and applied work. Research areas include: industrial dynamics; multi-sectoral and cross-country studies of productivity; innovations and new technologies; dynamic competition and structural change in a national and international context; causes and effects of technological, political and social changes; cyclic processes in economic evolution; the role of governments in a dynamic world; modelling complex dynamic economic systems; application of concepts, such as self-organization, bifurcation, and chaos theory to economics; evolutionary games. Officially cited as: J Evol Econ