FIVE ESSAYS ON STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND ECONOMIC DYNAMICS

This doctoral dissertation is divided in two parts. In part 1, we investigate, from a multi-sectoral perspective, one of the most important processes of structural change of the last fifty years, namely, the increase in relative importance of the financial sector, or financialisation. The term financialisation remains an unclear concept in social science. Our main innovation consists in conceptualise financialisation as an increase in the financial content in monetary terms of each unit of output produced. In this way, we are able to investigate changes in relative importance of financial activities considering interactions among sectors. In part 2, we extend Goodwin's growth cycle model to an open economy set up in a way that incorporates the balance-of-payments constraint to growth, i.e. Thirlwall's (1979) law.