In “The Growth of Modern Finance,” Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein of Harvard Business School show that the share of finance in US GDP almost doubled between 1980 and 2006, just before the onset of the financial crisis, from 4.9% to 8.3%. The two main factors driving that increase were the expansion of credit and the rapid rise in resources devoted to asset management (associated, not coincidentally, with the exponential growth in financial-sector incomes).
两篇最新文章进一步提出了质疑。在《现代金融的成长》（The Growth of Modern Finance）中，哈佛商学院的罗宾·格林伍德（Robin Greenwood）和大卫·沙夫斯坦（David Scharfstein）指出金融占美国GDP的比重在1980年到2006年金融危机前夕期间翻了近一番，从4.9%上升到8.3%。推动比重增加的两个主要因素是信用扩张和资产管理规模的快速扩大（金融部门收入也因此呈现出指数增长之势，这不是巧合）。