Since the beginning of the 2000s, emerging market economies, or middle-income countries, have embarked on major changes in their domestic financial systems. These changes - in which central banks have been key players - are shaped by the process of financialisation, which can generally be characterised by the dominance of financial considerations in the conduct of major agents (banks, non-financial corporations and households). As a consequence of the emerging markets crisis at the end of the 1990s, a new phenomenon in global financial markets emerged: a massive accumulation of foreign reserves in emerging economies. This has had important consequences for the global economy in which developed economies are the major beneficiaries.
Based on Marxist political economy, this book studies the trends towards financialisation in emerging economies, focusing on the effects of the reserve accumulation in their international and domestic spheres. It argues that reserve accumulation has
