Institutional Power and the Risk of Finance

Abstract

This article examines the nature of financial reason and the firm-level processes shaping and sustaining financial accumulation. It argues that the standard views of financial reason offered by neoclassical theory and international political economy prevent a nuanced understanding of key corporate power systems. Drawing on Hilferding’s theory of finance capital as well as his unique methodological approach, the paper shows that these accounts fail to consider properly the range of forces constituting financial rationality.