[CfP] Conference 2015 – Financialisation Working Group

Over the last three decades developed and developing economies have gone through significant structural transformations under the ever increasing influence of finance. In the critical political economy framework, the resultant mode of accumulation, and its corresponding social effects, have been analysed under the heading of financialisation and neoliberalism.  Whether the financial crisis that started in 2007-8 was the end or only an interruption to financialisation and/or neoliberalism, its costs are still borne by governments and the general public. Moreover, this 2007-8 crisis, while remaining a crisis for huge parts of the world’s population, has officially morphed into a “recovery” – albeit the slowest and weakest in recent history.

Within this context, the teaching of Economics has been significantly questioned by several segments of society. From think-tank institutions such as INEF – Institute for New Economics Thinking – to student-based organizations such as Rethinking Economics, there has been an intense demand for a plural economics curriculum that engages with real-world debates and includes elements such as the Green-Development and Marxist economics. This current climate has, among other things, placed pluralism in the economic discipline as the possible and necessary solution for the highly non-real issues based Economics syllabus, and given more space to voices – organizations, institutions and research groups – that have been neglected within the mainstream neoclassical literature.

The Sixth Annual Conference of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy aims at fostering a reflection on positive alternatives to the mainstream economics by examining political economy from the complementary angles of pluralism, interdisciplinarity and activism. The IIPPE Financialisation Working Group intends to join this reflection by coordinating panels that explore the heterodox approaches on exchange rates, interest rate-profit rate, monetary theory of production, money, financial crises, credit and finance. In our capacity as coordinators of the IIPPE Financialisation Working Group on Financialisation, we would like to encourage you to submit proposals for individual papers or complete panels to the Working Group for consideration for the Sixth IIPPE International Conference. In accordance with the general call for papers, contributions could include, but are not limited to:

• Limitations of mainstream economic theory and; the role and use of alternative critical studies and methodology in financialisation theory; financialisation and the findings from mainstream economics literature on growth of bank deposits and growth of stock markets
• Integration of Middle Income and Developing Countries into the global finance with the increasing international capital flows;
• Financialisation and the increase in the turnover in the financial markets of “financialised” countries; the increase of financial operations of firms and households in relation to income.
• Financialisation and the progressive increase of the role of money in the economy and society shaping the forms of exchange, circulation and distribution; financialisation and the monetary circuit.
• The evolution of financialisation before and after the current financial crisis. The future of the Euro and proposals of alternatives for the creation of a sustainable, functional and efficient financial system.
• Financialisation and restructuration of banking system; financialisation and the rise of shadow banking.
• Financialisation and politics: the case of the Greek financial crisis.
• The relationship between financialisation, financial imbalances/crises and liberalisation of capital controls during the last three decades in a global scale; the importance of institutions, rules and controls in the global financial system.

We would particularly like to encourage the submission of panel proposals (2-4 presentations). Panels, which collectively present the work of institutions or other academic groups, provide an excellent opportunity to showcase work in a greater depth than is possible in single presentations. It is further hoped that the conference will provide an opportunity to deepen links between groups working on finance from a critical perspective.

Abstracts of individual papers (max. 300 words) or panel proposals (max. 500 words plus abstracts of the individual papers) should be submitted to iippefinancialisationwg@gmail.com  by 15^th April 2015.

IIPPE Financialisation Working Group