Author: Matthias Petel

Live Zoom Panel - Wednesday, April 19, 11 am - 12 pm ET
Reminder: Sociological Perspectives on the Bank Failures of 2023

Zoom link: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/92491232615
Following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, as well as the forced acquisition of Credit Suisse, banks are back in the headlines. This panel considers recent events in light of the flowering of sociological research since the financial crisis of 2008.

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Reminder: Sociological Perspectives on the Bank Failures of 2023”

Current Scholarship
New York Times Podcast: A Radical Way of Thinking About Money with Morgan Ricks

We discuss what lessons banking regulators missed from the Great Recession; the need to panic-proof the entire financial system; the government’s role in insuring or backstopping deposits; what it would mean for the government to start treating money as a public good for us all; and more.
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New York Times Podcast: A Radical Way of Thinking About Money with Morgan Ricks”

Current Scholarship
How a Firm Profiting From Deposit Insurance Caps Is Lobbying to Keep Them

How a Firm Profiting From Deposit Insurance Caps Is Lobbying to Keep Them

A company called IntraFi offers two products that allow large depositors to spread their money among a network of hundreds of banks. If deposit insurance were uncapped, their business model would be worthless. It’s a full-court press to maintain a lucrative status quo.
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How a Firm Profiting From Deposit Insurance Caps Is Lobbying to Keep Them”

Current Scholarship
Sellers’ Inflation, Profits and Conflict: Why can Large Firms Hike Prices in an Emergency?

Isabella M. Weber and Evan Wasner, University of Massachusetts Amherst

The US COVID-19 inflation is predominantly a sellers’ inflation that derives from the ability of firms with market power to hike prices. Policy should aim to contain price hikes at the impulse stage to prevent inflation from the onset.
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Sellers’ Inflation, Profits and Conflict: Why can Large Firms Hike Prices in an Emergency?”

Current Scholarship
From Cannabis to Crypto: Federal Reserve Discretion in Payments

Julie Andersen Hill, University of Alabama - School of Law

This article shows that while the Federal Reserve has some discretion over the payments it processes and terms under which it offers it payments services, the Fed’s discretion is not so broad as to allow it to reject access requests from legally eligible banks. If the Fed wants to exclude banks, it should ask Congress to change the law.
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From Cannabis to Crypto: Federal Reserve Discretion in Payments”

Current Scholarship
Food, Money & Democracy: Cultivating Collective Provisioning for Resilient & Equitable Communities of Work

Benjamin C. Wilson, Taylor Reid & Max Sussman

Without reliable access to monetary resources, collective provisioning systems are vulnerable to financial crisis and collapse. Alleviating these vulnerabilities requires that monetary systems adopt collective coordination principles. Accordingly, this paper presents small and medium-scale monetary experiments that use food systems as a way to build community capacity.
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Food, Money & Democracy: Cultivating Collective Provisioning for Resilient & Equitable Communities of Work”

Current Scholarship
Consumer Protection after Consumer Sovereignty

Luke Herrine, University of Alabama School of Law

The central legal focus of the Article is the prohibition on “unfair acts or practices” shared by many federal and state agencies with consumer protection jurisdiction. The descriptive and normative arguments of this Article explain why it is now at the center of the action—and why that should be welcomed.
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Consumer Protection after Consumer Sovereignty”

Current Scholarship
The ‘climate shift’ in central banks: how field arbitrageurs paved the way for climate stress testing

Stine Quorning, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

The article contributes to the study of the political economy of central banks, investigating how discussions of climate change entered central banks and highlighting an underexplored form of ‘infrastructural entanglement’ between finance, the state bureaucracy, and central banks.
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The ‘climate shift’ in central banks: how field arbitrageurs paved the way for climate stress testing”

Current Scholarship
Caught between Frontstage and Backstage: The Failure of the Federal Reserve to Halt Rule Evasion in the Financial Crisis of 1974

Pierre-Christian Fink, Harvard University and Hebrew University Jerusalem

Based on original archival evidence from the financial crisis of 1974, this article discusses regulators who publicly pretend to stay within their mandate, which renders re-regulation of rule evasion less likely. The finding contributes a new explanation for why periods of instability so rarely lead to change.
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Caught between Frontstage and Backstage: The Failure of the Federal Reserve to Halt Rule Evasion in the Financial Crisis of 1974”

Announcement
New Book by Joseph Vogl

Capital and Ressentiment: A Short Theory of the Present

The fusing of finance capital and information has provided ideal conditions on social media in which feelings of anger and frustration can be expressed and shared, forming a deep pool of ressentiment that is being drawn upon and exploited by populist and authoritarian leaders.
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New Book by Joseph Vogl”

Current Scholarship
Risk, Discretion, and Bank Supervision

Peter Conti-Brown (University of Pennsylvania) and Sean Vanatta (University of Glasgow)

Using the rich history of supervision in the United States from the antebellum period to the present, this article presents a theoretical conception of supervision as the space where bankers and the government engage each other in sometimes cooperative, sometimes contentious disputes with substantial influence on the direction of financial and economic policy.
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Risk, Discretion, and Bank Supervision”

Current Scholarship
New Symposium on “Networks, Platforms, and Utilities” by Ricks, Sitaraman, Welton, and Menand

Morgan Ricks, Ganesh Sitaraman, Shelley Welton, and Lev Menand

Networks, Platforms, and Utilities (NPU) is the first entirely new casebook integrating NPU law in a quarter century—and the first with some temporal distance from the deregulatory movement of the late twentieth century. The book thus contributes to larger intellectual shifts in the academy and public policy.
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New Symposium on “Networks, Platforms, and Utilities” by Ricks, Sitaraman, Welton, and Menand”

Announcement
Reminder: Intersections of finance and society 2023 CFP closes May 1!

Reminder: Call for Papers for Intersections of finance and society 2023 will close on May 1st. Contributors are expressly invited to propose and debate existing and novel solutions for improving financial stability, expanding fintech inclusion, mitigating climate breakdown, and tackling the inequalities associated with financialisation.
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Reminder: Intersections of finance and society 2023 CFP closes May 1!”

Announcement
Finance and Society Network CFP: Intersections of finance and society 2023 in Brussels (September 14-15)

Call for Papers open for Intersections of finance and society 2023, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 14-15 September. Contributors are expressly invited to propose and debate existing and novel solutions for improving financial stability, expanding fintech inclusion, mitigating climate breakdown, and tackling the inequalities associated with financialisation.
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Finance and Society Network CFP: Intersections of finance and society 2023 in Brussels (September 14-15)”