FESSUD - Financialisation, Economy, Society and Sustainable Development
FESSUD brings together expertise from 14 leading universities across Europe and South Africa and one civil society organisation to look afresh at how the financial system affects the world around us. We need to know what can be done to make the financial system work for society, the economy and the environment and not – as has sometimes been the case – the other way round.
The FESSUD project targets a wide public going from policy makers to representatives of the business sector, through civil society, to academics and citizens from the EU and beyond.
Some central issues FESSUD aims to address are: What is financialisation and how has it impacted on the achievement of specific economic, social, and environmental objectives? What is the nature of the relationship between financialisation and the sustainability of the financial system, economic development and the environment? What lessons can be drawn from the crisis about the nature and impacts of financialisation? What are the requisites of a financial system able to support a process of sustainable development, broadly conceived?
As a first step, partners have analyzed and assessed the nature of national and international financial systems as well as their evolution evolution in the last three decades in 15 countries. They have also led a thorough study on the causes and consequences of the global and national financial crises since 2007.
The central questions addressed in the frame of this project are how the economic performance of the last 30 years has depended on the various financialisation processes and ways financialisation has impacted the implementation of economic, social and environmental objectives.
FESSUD will offer political conclusions to be drawn from the financial crises in terms of impacts that are directly linked to financialisation. It will develop policy briefs on how to regulate the financial sector and macro-economic policies that would enable finance to better serve economic, social and environmental needs.
FESSUD activities:
- Kick-off meeting, Leeds, January 2012
- 5 annual conferencesopen to the public: Berlin (2012), Amsterdam (2013), Warsaw (2014); Lisbon (2015); the final conference will be held in Brussels in 2016.
- A series of studies on the national financial systems in 15 different countries - 'FESSUD studies in financial systems'
- A series of Working Papers, policy briefs and 10 FESSUD newsletters
FESSUD has received funding from the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 266800.