Financialization in France

Exploring the monetary and financial reforms carried out in France during the 1980s, this book explains how the transformation of mechanisms for financing economic activities led to the financialisation of the French economy, aligning it with a broader European and global movement. Unlike the United States, the French reforms heavily relied on the actions of state institutions and senior Treasury officials to implement the new financial system and reform monetary policy. Paradoxically, these neoliberal reforms were advanced by a socialist government in power, which, facing economic difficulties and internal divisions over the 1981 stimulus policy, shifted its priorities from reducing unemployment to tackling inflation.

The book first revisits the episode of the "turn towards austerity" and the shift in budgetary policy. It then delves into the specifics of deregulation measures and the behind-the-scenes of bureaucratic reforms. Following this, it explores how key actors promoted competition and market mechanisms to implement the reforms. Finally, it demonstrates how the disinflation strategy became central to the modernisation of economic policy.

Employing both qualitative and quantitative analyses, this book is directed at academic readers interested in the economic sociology of financialisation, the history of neoliberal economic reforms and the pivotal decade of the 1980s more broadly.