Scholars asserted financialization’s existence without providing direct evidence

Evidence

While many commentators in both popular and scholarly accounts have noted these and related developments,there have been few attempts to explore the meaning of such phenomena for the nature of the economy, considered broadly. In large part, this omission reflects the fact that the data that would allow a macro-level examination of the growing weight of finance in the American economy—a development that I refer to as financialization—raise a host of difficult methodological issues. As a result, even those accounts that are concerned with understanding the rise of finance in structural terms typically assert the presence of this phenomenon without providing any direct evidence for it. — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 9

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the defining move of the article: naming financialization as ‘the growing weight of finance in the American economy’ and flagging the measurement problem that earlier accounts dodged.
• QUESTION: What specifically are the ‘difficult methodological issues’ that make macro-level evidence so hard to produce?
• XREF: connects to: Financialization lacks rigorous empirical evidence defining its timing and magnitude — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 13; Arrighi and Phillips asserted financialization without empirical support — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 9; Prior research linked financialization to inequality mostly indirectly, not causally. — Ken-Hou Lin & Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Financialization and U.S. Income…, 24

Related

• Financialization lacks rigorous empirical evidence defining its timing and magnitude (similarity 0.93)
• Arrighi and Phillips asserted financialization without empirical support (similarity 0.91)
• The US economy became increasingly financialized in the post-1970s period. (similarity 0.88)
• Financialization is a pattern of accumulation dominated by financial channels over trade and production (similarity 0.85)
• Prior research linked financialization to inequality mostly indirectly, not causally. (similarity 0.85)
• The financialization literature lacks a unified definition across four competing usages (similarity 0.84)
• Financialization must be measured by profit generation, not employment or output (similarity 0.84)
• Financialization marks a decisive shift from production-based to finance-driven accumulation. (similarity 0.84)
• Scholars should verify economic shifts empirically before explaining them (similarity 0.84)
• Financialization has competing explanations from three distinct scholarly disciplines. (similarity 0.83)
• Counterfactual independence assumptions likely understate financialization’s true inequality impact (similarity 0.83)
• Financialization means accumulation through financial channels rather than production (similarity 0.82)
• Financialization has both micro and macro scholarly definitions (similarity 0.82)
• Financialization cannot be reduced to stock market developments. (similarity 0.81)
• Finance has come to dominate American economic life. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Financialization lacks rigorous empirical evidence defining its timing and magnitude #corroborates (0.95) — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 13
• Arrighi and Phillips asserted financialization without empirical support #exemplifies (0.85) — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 9