Hostile-takeover markets and Reagan politics, not finance theory, drove 1980s financialization

Evidence

The “market for corporate control” sparked by the hostile acquisitions of the 1980s was another cause of the financialization of American corporations, and financial economics played only a minor part in the emergence of this market. (See the discussion of Michael Milken above.) The wider political and economic changes both symbolized and encouraged by the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the accommodation with those changes reached in the 1990s by the Democrats were clearly important too. Free-market economics was of obvious importance to those changes, but financial economics specifically did not play a prominent role. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1175

Categorization

• XREF: Bounds the performativity claim: the book’s own thesis gets its limits marked, against naive readings that finance theory caused financialization. — connects to: Hostile takeovers in the 1980s drove the financialization of corporations — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 49; The mid-1980s bull market was driven by liberalization and leveraged buyouts — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 816; The Reagan-Thatcher era redistributed wealth from poor to rich rather than abandoning Keynesianism — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 601 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The Reagan-Thatcher era redistributed wealth from poor to rich rather than abandoning Keynesianism #corroborates (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 601
• US public corporations were dismantled in the 1980s as capitalism shifted toward financial speculation #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 128