Abstract:

The main purpose of the article is to measure and compare the level of financialization of non-financial enterprises in the European Union (EU) countries and in the United States, and to determine the changes in the level of this phenomenon in 2009-2018. An additional goal is to define the relationship between the process of financialization of enterprises and the size of the financial sector and the model of the financial system. In the analysis, the authors used a synthetic indicator of the financialization of enterprises (SIEF) which allows for the assessment of the level of this phenomenon in non-financial entities. Research has shown that in the EU countries, the average level of enterprise financialization measured by the SIEF index increased between 2009 and 2018. The opposite tendency took place in the United States. In the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries, which joined the EU in 2004 and later, the financialiaztion of enterprises in 2009 showed a much lower level than in the EU-15 countries. However, in subsequent years this process progressed faster in the CEE countries, which meant that in 2018 the level of this phenomenon in both groups of countries was similar. The analysis confirmed the assumptions that the higher the share of the financial sector in GDP in a given country, the higher the level of financialization of non-financial enterprises. Similarly, in countries characterized by a market-oriented financial system, the level of enterprise financialization is higher than in countries where the banking-oriented model dominates.