Are there any good economic books (introductory, or otherwise) on economic tertiarization and financialization?

March 13, 2011 5:42 PM

Are there any good economic books (introductory, or otherwise) on economic tertiarization (transition to services over manufacturing and natural resource extraction) and financialization (stock market, speculation, derivatives, etc.) in the industrial world? Additionally, perhaps any Marxist works that deal with this changed economic structure? I'm aware of Mandel's Late Capitalism, Hilferding's Finance Capital, and Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, but Hilferding seems too early (haven't read him though) and Marcuse's interactions struck me as shallow because he never really examined this area in depth.
posted by SollosQ to science & nature (2 answers total)

I can't recommend a specific book, but research at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Change has found evidence that in Britain (or perhaps just England), the service sector was already growing rapidly as of the 19th century. from their premilinary findings:

"It is widely supposed that the industrializing regions of north-west England (Lancashire and the West Riding) experienced a rapid increase in the relative importance of secondary sector employment between 1760 and 1830. However a large-scale analysis of occupational data for the period 1750-1871 shows that in fact the rise in the relative importance of secondary sector employment in the north-west took place during the early modern period and actually declined slightly over the classic 'industrial revolution' period. After 1815, some other parts of the country experienced the rapid increase in secondary sector employment usually assumed to have characterised the industrial districts between 1760 and 1830. In contrast, the growth of service sector employment (especially transport) was dramatic and continuous in all regions of England from the late eighteenth century onwards. Nationally there was more growth in the secondary sector between 1500 and 1750 than there was between 1750 and 1850. These findings necessitate some rethinking of the first industrial revolution, its causes and its consequences. Not least, these findings finally resolve the long-standing controversy as to whether the first industrial revolution was a relatively short dramatic event or a more protracted process. The evidence in favour of the latter view is now overwhelming."

You might find some of their publications interesting; I'm sorry I don't know of an overarching one, as I came across this research as a presentation to an economic history seminar.
posted by jb at 7:06 PM on March 13, 2011

A recent article on deindustrialization (Christopher Kollmeyer, "Explaining Deindustrialization: How Affluence, Productivity Growth, and Globalization Diminish Manufacturing Employment") refers to Colin Clark, The Conditions of Economic Progress (1957) and Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973).

According to Google Scholar, the article Trade, Jobs, and Wages (1993), by Paul Krugman and Robert Lawrence, is cited by 432 other articles. It attributes deindustrialization to productivity growth in manufacturing rather than international trade. Also see Krugman's essay The Accidental Theorist.
posted by russilwvong at 12:36 PM on March 14, 2011