معلومات المساق

It is widely believed today that we face a series of unprecedented socio-economic challenges—from the climate, housing, infrastructure, and innovation to national defence. In this context, calls have intensified for central banks to leverage their role in the monetary system to encourage credit allocation towards green investment. Orthodox voices in Europe, meanwhile, have called for enhanced money and capital market integration, financial innovation and deregulation, and “derisking” by governments to address these investment demands. Yet the belief that market-based finance can solve Europe’s problems is anything but straightforward because it requires a renovation of Europe’s financial and monetary infrastructure that has significant distributional implications. And it also raises the question of what institutional innovations—both public and private—historical actors have used to satisfy major socio-economic transformations in the past.

This course explores the relationship between state and society by examining the evolving role of governments in the infrastructure of money and finance, drawing on heterodox theory and economic history to interrogate the orthodox policy consensus described above. It is divided into three parts:

• ·       Part I introduces key concepts including “the state”, “money”, “capital” and “finance”, reviewing heterodox approaches—including institutionalism, Law and Political Economy, the Money View and Critical Macro-Finance—offering theories of how these categories relate to one another.
• ·       Part II offers a longue durée perspective on the division of labour between public and private actors in European monetary and financial systems, from the late medieval period to early 20th century. Special attention is paid to institutions designed to ensure the commensurability of private and public money, and to the role of finance in consolidating nation states, supporting industrialisation, and enabling the emergence of large corporations.
• ·       Part III examines solutions developed by state actors and central banks in the 20th and 21st century to address the financing demands of structural economic change and post-war reconstruction, contrasting them with contemporary market-based finance solutions to the problem of green investment.

Learning will primarily take place through the reading of scholarly articles, student presentations, and group discussions. Activities pursued during the tutorial sessions will include role-playing exercises to understand the instruments and institutions of the payment system and money market, as well as the analysis of primary sources to uncover how historical actors sought to adapt monetary and financial institutions to redirect credit resources to specific ends.