Abstract
Financial markets and institutions play an essential role in economic life. They gather together idle savings and convert them into usable funds. We depend on financial markets to distribute these funds in a way that fuels growth, puts capital to its most productive use, guides businesses toward sound decisions, and helps us mitigate life’s inherent risks. As Nobel laureate in economics Robert C. Merton put it, “The core function of the financial system is to facilitate the allocation and deployment of economic resources, both spatially and across time, in an uncertain environment.”1 Finance, when it performs this core function well, is an indispensable tool for improving productivity and material well-being.
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Notes
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Ben Ansell, “The Political Economy of Ownership: Housing Markets and the Welfare State,” American Political Science Review 108, no. 2 (May 2014): 383–402, doi:10.1017/S0003055414000045.
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© 2016 Gregory W. Fuller
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Fuller, G.W. (2016). Introduction. In: The Great Debt Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137548733_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137548733_1
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