Saving businesses or market? Crony capitalism in the writings of Luigi Zingales

Titolo Rivista HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY
Autori/Curatori Francesco Alfani
Anno di pubblicazione 2025 Fascicolo 2025/2
Lingua Inglese Numero pagine 27 P. 5-31 Dimensione file 124 KB
DOI 10.3280/SPE2025-002001
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The term, and the concept of, crony capitalism gained some momentum in the political and economic debate on the Southeast Asian financial crisis of the second half of the 1990s. Luigi Zingales has been arguably one of the economists who not only brought the most relevant contribution to its study but also contributed to popularize it, mainly with the book “Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists”, written with Raghuram G. Rajan in 2003. We review the role of the scientific production of Zingales on this concept, considering its uniqueness as regards its application to the analysis of the financial markets and exploiting its consistency in the works written before and after the 2008 financial crisis. We argue that the concept of crony capitalism in the works of Zingales can be isolated as proposing a self-standing model of the relation between economic and political institutions.

Parole chiave:Luigi Zingales, financial markets, crony capitalism, rent-seeking

Jel codes:B25, B31, G38, O16, P16

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Francesco Alfani, Saving businesses or market? Crony capitalism in the writings of Luigi Zingales in "HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY" 2/2025, pp 5-31, DOI: 10.3280/SPE2025-002001