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The private rental sector (PRS) is making a surprising comeback. A central argument in our paper is that we see the rise of PRS and the associated stagnation of homeownership as springing from the contradictions inherent to financialized homeowner societies. Rather than a feature of either mature or late homeowner societies, contradictions of the promotion of homeownership through the expansion of mortgage markets paved the way for a revival of the PRS. Our case is the Netherlands, but our argument has a wider remit. We sketch the dominant trends in Dutch housing policy and present an overview of the rise of PRS and Buy-To-Let in Dutch cities. We identify how housing policies and realities have driven a shift from a debt-driven to a wealth-driven model of financialization, in which the demand for PRS as an investment class and as a place to live has become central. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why does a social housing provider bet on interest rate fluctuations? This article presents a case study of the financialization of both housing and the state. Social housing in the Netherlands is provided by non-profit housing associations that have since 1989 been set apart from the state. Many associations started developing housing for profit, borrowing on global capital markets or buying derivatives. Whereas other semi-public institutions moved into the world of finance due to financial constraints, housing associations did so to capitalize on the possibilities offered by their asset-rich portfolios. Vestia, the largest of them all, is an extreme--but not exceptional--case of what can happen when public goals are left to be realized by inadequately supervised and poorly managed private organizations. As a result of gambling on derivatives, Vestia had to be bailed out to the tune of over 2 billion euros. To recoup the losses, housing was sold off and rents were raised. Almost half of Dutch housing associations used derivatives, although most refrained from using them purely speculatively. The changes in the housing sector that led to its financialization cannot be separated from the wider financialization of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If any organization ought to be immune to the forces of financialization, it is a publicly funded university in corporatist Europe. Shielded from the intrusion by financial metrics, values and professionals through a strong historically rooted tradition of self-management by powerful professional guilds, continental universities should largely have avoided the marketization and managerialization of Anglophone universities. Not so, this case study of a Dutch public university suggests. From 1995 onwards, a shift in real estate management-devolving responsibilities from the Dutch state to universities-served as a Trojan horse for financialization, triggering changes in organizational culture and a power shift from teaching and research professionals to accountants, real-estate developers, financiers and their ilk. This case suggests that the power of finance is such that no societal domain is immune. The paper ends with a call for more non-metropolitan case studies of financialization and argues that the only hope for salvation is a more self-conscious defense of traditional academic values by the guardians of higher learning themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The securitization crisis that started in mid-2007 has demonstrated that we are indeed living in a "global financial village" and are all subject to the vagaries of financialization. Nevertheless, the fallout from the credit crisis has not been homogeneous across space. That some localities were hit harder than others suggests that there are distinct geographies of financialization. Combining insights from the "varieties of capitalism" literature with those from the literature on "financialization studies," the article offers a first take on what may explain these different geographies on the basis of an informal comparison of the trajectories of financialization and their political repercussions in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands. The article ends with some reflections on how economic geography could be enriched by combining comparative studies on institutionalism and financialization, while its distinct research focus-detailed spatial analysis endowed with a well-developed sensitivity for geographic variegation—may help overcome the methodological nationalism of much comparative institutionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]