Les inégalités, entre bonne et mauvaise finance

Patrice Baubeau

Revue d'économie financière, 2017, vol. N° 128, issue 4, 91-108

Abstract: Despite the persistent link between finance and inequality, established in very different contexts over the few thousand years of urban and monetary civilization, the nature of this link remains highly problematic. Is it a causality, the development of financial activities causing the rise of inequality? Or is it a simple correlation, the two phenomena basically arising from similar causes? We opt here for the second position, which does not mean that the financial tools and the rise of the financial professions cannot amplify the increase in inequalities, but rather that the latter finds its origin in social processes incorporating a strong political dimension. Better still, it highlights how, at least on certain occasions, financial techniques can contribute to social pacification - itself to be distinguished from progress towards equality. Thus, without falling into the ideological trap of an axiological or instrumental neutrality of finance, it seems to us that the capture of the latter by a dominant political group is more problematic than the nature of its activities. Classification JEL: D5, D63, E25, G0, N3.

JEL-codes: D5 D63 E25 G0 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=ECOFI_128_0091 (application/pdf)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-financiere-2017-4-page-91.htm (text/html)
free

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cai:refaef:ecofi_128_0091

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revue d'économie financière from Association d'économie financière
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire ().