financialization/1 % bleg
I teach a course on organizations, work and the economy for undergraduates. It is aimed at lower division students. I want to do one or two lectures on “fincialization,” the growth of jobs in finance, the shift in wealth, and so forth. Alternatively, one could teach a lecture or two on the topic of “the 1%.”
My issue is that there don’t seem to be many good essays on this topic aimed at undergraduates. I want an essay that is nuts and bolts, not a think piece. Something like a meaty Contexts piece with some strong charts and graphs on income inequality in the age of financialization.
Any ideas?
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orgtheory.net 
There is a difference between “wealth” and “income” statistics that is constantly confused in inequality and journalistic reporting, that UGs need to be made aware of. Income is a flow – wealth is a stock.
And I think a scholarly review of the issue should confront its interlocutor: UG monetary theory (banks match savers with borrowers, reduce transactions costs, etc).
Suresh Naidu is a heterdox economist at Columbia who has some slides floating around out there for UGs. I would email him and ask him about it.
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Graham Peterson
December 21, 2012 at 12:14 am
Not one big Contexts-like piece as you requested but something could be pieced together from a few sources, I think:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/how-economic-growth-and-the-1-left-the-middle-class-behind/256998/
http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rediscovering-government/can-tighter-financial-regulation-and-smaller-financial-sector-increase
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/business/the-perils-of-feeding-a-bloated-financial-industry.html
As you can see, The Atlantic is a primary source for me for such things. I assign a lot of their work to my undergrads. They seem to manage it fine.
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tressiemc22
December 21, 2012 at 12:18 am
Fabio, I would recommend Sum et al. 2008 The Great Divergence: Real Wage Growth of All Workers Versus Finance Workers.
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Ken
December 21, 2012 at 3:32 am
Can you have them read a book chapter? The book Freefall by Joseph A. Stiglitz is very accessible and I highly recommend. Not only does he discuss financialization, but I particularly enjoy how he explains changes in the banking industry particularly, and how those changes are a reflection of/in feedback with financialization at large.
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Emily Kennedy
December 21, 2012 at 3:44 am
Another good book is Timothy Noah’s “The Great Divergence.”
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Diane Burton
December 21, 2012 at 4:32 am
You’re welcome to pillage the deck I put together on Occupy and inequality:
Click to access Davis%20Inequality%20and%20Occupy.pdf
(which draws heavily on the Wilkinson and Pickett book at the start).
And if you’re hoping to induce long-term depression, I had a thing in Academy of Management Perspectives on financialization that’s pretty accessible, and has lots of charts and tables:
Click to access davis_09_AMP.pdf
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jerrydavisumich
December 21, 2012 at 5:21 am
Even though it was in ASR, my 2011 paper with Ken-Hou Lin is an accessible institutional account, has the basic facts as figures and isnot technical.
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Don Tomaskovic-DeveyD
December 21, 2012 at 1:20 pm
The research briefs on the Scholars Strategy Network site are useful for teaching. They cover all kinds of social policy issues.
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almeling
December 22, 2012 at 1:46 am
Take a look at these:
Krippner, Greta R. Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance. Harvard University Press, 2012.
———. “The Financialization of the American Economy.” Socio-Economic Review 3, no. 2 (2005): 173–208.
Ott, Julia C. When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investors’ Democracy. Harvard University Press, 2011.
Lapavitsas, Costas. “Theorizing financialization.” Work, Employment and Society 25, no. 4 (2011): 611–626. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0950017011419708.
Stockhammer, E. Financialization and the Global Economy. Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Working Papers, 2010.
And for some interesting charts and very accessible formalizations
Boyer, Robert. “Is a Finance-led Growth Regime a Viable Alternative to Fordism? A Preliminary Analysis.” Economy and Society 29, no. 1 (2000): 111–145. doi:10.1080/030851400360587.
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Bert Mustafa (@bertmustaf)
December 22, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Found it:
http://www.politicaleducation.org/links/
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Graham Peterson
December 22, 2012 at 9:49 pm
My students read Tomaskovic-Devey and Lin’s 2011 ASR article (“Income Dynamics, Economic Rents, and the Financialization of the U.S. Economy”) in the second week of my Sociology of the Financial Crisis course and they find it very accessible.
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Josh Mccabe
December 27, 2012 at 2:26 pm