Our aim is to encourage discussion, debate, and scholarship on money’s design and its reform towards a world that is as just as it is (economically) productive. (read more)
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Registration Open Soon
Money as a Democratic Medium 2.0
We are delighted to announce Money as a Democratic Medium 2.0. The Conference will be held at two sites in order to maximize participation while minimizing carbon impacts: Cambridge, MA (Harvard Law School, June 15-17, 2023) and Hamburg, Germany (the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and THE NEW INSTITUTE, June 15-16, 2023). The Conference is open to all students of money, credit, and finance, the monetary system, and the modern economy, including members of the public. We will offer robust online access and we encourage distant participants
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Money as a Democratic Medium 2.0”
Cambridge, MA Registration is Open!
Money as a Democratic Medium 2.0 Conference
Registration for the Cambridge, MA and Hamburg, Germany meetings of Money as a Democratic Medium 2.0 conference have begun. Registration and schedules for both locations are linked below.
Register for Cambridge, MA Meeting
Schedule of Cambridge, MA Meeting [PDF]
Register for Hamburg, Germany Meeting
Schedule of Hamburg, Germany Meeting [PDF]
The Conference will be held at two sites in order to maximize participation while minimizing carbon impacts: Cambridge, MA (Harvard Law School, June 15-17, 2023) and Hamburg, Germany (the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and THE NEW INSTITUTE, June 15-16, 2023).
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Money as a Democratic Medium 2.0 Conference”
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
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New York Times Podcast: A Radical Way of Thinking About Money with Morgan Ricks”
Current Scholarship
The Power of Money
Paul Sheard
Money permeates our everyday lives—it literally makes the economic world go round—and yet confusion and controversy about money abound.
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The Power of Money”
Current Scholarship
How are Banks and the Fed Linked? Teaching Key Concepts Today
Jane Ihrig, Gretchen Weinbach & Scott Wolla, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, USA
This article walks through the roles of banks and the Federal Reserve (the Fed) in the financial system and describes the key linkages between the two, using current concepts.
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How are Banks and the Fed Linked? Teaching Key Concepts Today”
Current Scholarship
Money as an Instrument for Justice
Sandeep Vaheesan, Open Markets Institute
For nearly a century, the private view of money has prevailed. But the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 offers a glimpse of money as a public instrument. Is this law the breach in the dam of scarce, private money?
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Money as an Instrument for Justice”
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
Solvency as a Fundamental Constraint on LOLR Policy for Independent Central Banks: Principles, History, Law
Sir Paul M. W. Tucker
This paper follows up earlier work advocating a principled modernization of doctrines for central bank lender-of-last-resort policies and operations.
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Solvency as a Fundamental Constraint on LOLR Policy for Independent Central Banks: Principles, History, Law”
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
Tax Policy for a Climate in Crisis
Martha McCluskey, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
How can a Law and Political Economy approach guide the power of taxation toward democracy, justice, and a livable planet? Taxation should be viewed as one of several interrelated strategies for mobilizing the public power of money to re-orient both economy and the state.
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Tax Policy for a Climate in Crisis”
Current Scholarship
The Work of Retirement
Jeffrey Sklansky, University of Illinois at Chicago
The essay points to a fertile field for further study: as retirees have increasingly relied on professional asset managers and caregivers, the finance and health sectors have undergone converging crises over fiduciary duty and elder care, posing parallel challenges for organized labor.
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The Work of Retirement”
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”
Current Scholarship
The Bank of the People, 1835-1840: Law and Money in Upper Canada
Dan Rohde, SJD Harvard Law School
This article provides a legal-political history of that early contest over Canadian money and sovereignty, and explores the way in which Upper Canada’s Reformers put forth a critique of bank-issued money that remains relevant today.
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The Bank of the People, 1835-1840: Law and Money in Upper Canada”
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
Beyond market neutrality? Central banks and the problem of climate change
Matthias Thiemann (Sciences Po), Tim Büttner, and Oliver Kessler
The issue of climate change has altered the self-understanding of central bankers and driven them towards a more active stance where they acknowledge that central bankers shape and make, and not only ‘mirror’, market forces.
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Beyond market neutrality? Central banks and the problem of climate change”
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”
Current Scholarship
Connected Lending of Last Resort
Kris James Mitchener, Santa Clara University, and Eric Monnet, Paris School of Economics
Utilizing a novel, hand-collected historical daily dataset on loans to commercial banks, we analyze how personal connections matter for lending of last resort, highlighting the importance of governance for this core function of central banks.
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Connected Lending of Last Resort”
Current Scholarship
Why Lancashire? Banking As the Spark That Set Off Industrialization
Carolyn Sissoko, University of the West of England
The paper argues that a change in the Bank of England’s commercial discount policy at the end of the Seven Years’ War promoted the growth of banking.
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Why Lancashire? Banking As the Spark That Set Off Industrialization”
Announcement
The Banking & Finance Law Review (BFLR) is Hiring a Fintech Fellow!
The Banking & Finance Law Review is pleased to announce the second annual FinTech Fellowship, which gives doctoral candidates insight into the editorial process of scholarly journal publication in this cutting-edge field of law. Application deadline May 1st, 2023.
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The Banking & Finance Law Review (BFLR) is Hiring a Fintech Fellow!”
Announcement
UNSW Sydney Law and Justice is Hiring a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
UNSW Sydney Law and Justice is Hiring a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, with an application deadline of February 13th, 2023.
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UNSW Sydney Law and Justice is Hiring a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow”
Current Scholarship
Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics Volume 3, Number 2
Editorial Group, Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics
One possible reading of the current issue is that we invite readers to ponder historical hauntings of modern political economies, including "austerity haunting 'noncapitalist' contexts," "the history of money haunting modern-day understandings of central bank digital currencies," "colonialism haunting African development," and more.
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Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics Volume 3, Number 2”
Current Scholarship
Paper Money of a ‘Peculiar Character’: The Notes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1820-1870
Michael Ryan, International Bank Note Society
The Hudson's Bay Company issued promissory notes from 1820 to 1870 that served as paper money in the Red River Colony. These notes are a fascinating artefact of the fur trade, which played an important role in the earliest phase of European engagement with Canada and the US.
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Paper Money of a ‘Peculiar Character’: The Notes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1820-1870”
Current Scholarship
Navigating uncertainty in networks of social exchange: a relational event study of a community currency system
Jakob Hoffmann and Johannes Glückler, Heidelberg University
This article analyzes the structure of socially embedded exchange under uncertainty in the context of a community currency system in Germany.
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Navigating uncertainty in networks of social exchange: a relational event study of a community currency system”
Current Scholarship
The Case Against the Debt Tax
Vijay Raghavan, Brooklyn Law School
This Article argues that the tax on cancelled debt is the product of broader political forces and not just the internal logic of tax, and it concludes by proposing changes to tax administration and the tax code that would sharply circumscribe the scope of the tax.
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The Case Against the Debt Tax”
Fall 2022 - Money, Sanctions and International Law
Sanctions and Decoupling After Neoliberalism
David Singh Grewal, UC Berkeley
We are once again in the awful position of testing the proposition that commercial integration among nations leads to peace. And, to the extent that it clearly does not, we are left wondering about how effective either monetary and economic sanctions can be—and, more broadly, what economic “decoupling” looks like in a post-neoliberal world.
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Sanctions and Decoupling After Neoliberalism”
Current Scholarship
The Financialization of U.S. Public Pensions, 1945-1974
Sean Vanatta, University of Glasgow
This article examines a major transformation in public employee pension investment in the United States. Ultimately, financialization was not the product of a radical break or crisis in the 1970s, but was a continuous process in the post-World War II era, one initially pursued by state and local government officials in service of welfare liberalism.
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The Financialization of U.S. Public Pensions, 1945-1974”
Fall 2022 - Money, Sanctions and International Law
International Law and 21st Century Financial Warfare
Suzanne Katzenstein, Duke University; Stephen Park, University of Connecticut
Financial sanctions of the current scope and magnitude can no longer be relied upon to enforce international law in a manner that complies with it. Relying on international law to constrain the impacts of warfare—here, financial warfare—may also risk legitimizing its expanding use.
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International Law and 21st Century Financial Warfare”
Announcement
The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project is Hiring an Academic Fellow
The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project seeks to hire an Academic Fellow to play both a scholarly and organizational role, with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2023.
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The Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project is Hiring an Academic Fellow”
Current Scholarship
Economics and Dishonesty
Prabhat Patnaik, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Economics is a subject where the ruling classes are forever trying to promote ideologically-motivated explanations in lieu of scientific ones.
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Economics and Dishonesty”
Current Scholarship
Special Issue from Journal of Cultural Economy: FinTech in Africa
Paul Langley, Durham University, and Daivi Rodima-Taylor, Boston University
By re-centering global social science research agendas and political debates on Africa, this special issue hopes to inspire further work and future political engagement with FinTech which doesn’t begin, by default, from developments and experiences in the Global West and East.
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Special Issue from Journal of Cultural Economy: FinTech in Africa”
Current Scholarship
Introduction: The Structural Power of Finance Meets Financialization
Natalya Naqvi et. al., London School of Economics
The contributions to this special issue engage with how decades of financialization have transformed the basis of structural power toward alternative functions that have gone unnoticed in the existing literature. These include household and real estate lending that fuels consumption-led growth, concentration and expansion of financial institutions as tools of geo-economic strategy, financing current account deficits that facilitate global imbalances, and wealth preservation that bolsters inequality.
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Introduction: The Structural Power of Finance Meets Financialization”
Current Scholarship
Special Issue from Economy and Society: Recentering Central Banks
Nathan Coombs, University of Edinburgh, and Matthias Thiemann, Sciences Po
This special issue argues that to make sense of the increased prominence of central banks after the 2008 financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic requires interrogating the sources of and limits to their governmental power.
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Special Issue from Economy and Society: Recentering Central Banks”
Current Scholarship
Financialization, Structural Power, and the Global Financial Crisis for Europe’s Core and Periphery
Nina Eichacker, University of Rhode Island
As Eurozone governments consider how to respond to crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic going forward, policies that more equitably support governments rescuing domestic financial actors should be considered in tandem with broader financial regulations of structurally important economic institutions.
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Financialization, Structural Power, and the Global Financial Crisis for Europe’s Core and Periphery”
Current Scholarship
Uncomfortable knowledge in central banking: Economic expertise confronts the visibility dilemma
Jacqueline Best, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa
How do central bankers cope with the uncomfortable fact that there are significant limits to their expertise without losing authority?
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Uncomfortable knowledge in central banking: Economic expertise confronts the visibility dilemma”
Current Scholarship
Finance and Society: Volume 9, Number 1 (2023) Out Now!
Finance and Society: Volume 9 Out Now!
The issue features a keynote essay by Janet Roitman on platform economies beyond the North-South divide. Research articles address climate change central banking, property valuation in Brazil, and the ‘Edges of the financial imagination.’ It is fully open-access!
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Finance and Society: Volume 9, Number 1 (2023) Out Now!”
Current Scholarship
Capitalizing Africa – High finance from below
James Christopher Mizes and Kevin P. Donovan, Université Paris-Dauphine and University of Edinburgh
In this issue, our contributors explore new modes of popular and professional reasoning about finance in Africa by Africans, and their specific struggles over how to know, value and manage capital.
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Capitalizing Africa – High finance from below”
Current Scholarship
Financial dominance: why the ‘market maker of last resort’ is a bad idea and what to do about it
Carolyn Sissoko, University of the West of England
This paper sets forth a framework modeling the traditional ‘banking approach’ to central bank liquidity provision and advocates a return to it. These reforms must be accompanied by a clear policy that in the event that any bank requires re-capitalization by the government, existing shareholder interests will be wiped out, and ownership will be transferred to the government.
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Financial dominance: why the ‘market maker of last resort’ is a bad idea and what to do about it”
Current Scholarship
Battling Institutional Debt at HBCUs
Andrew J. Douglas, Morehouse College
The article underscores an increasingly important point: all members of a campus community ought to be deeply concerned about institutional debt. A campaign against institutional debt at HBCUs could be a powerful initiative of the AAUP’s Committee on Historically Black Institutions and Scholars of Color, and it could help to draw more HBCU faculty into the push for a New Deal for Higher Education.
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Battling Institutional Debt at HBCUs”
Current Scholarship
The Key to Value (2.0): The Debate Over Commensurability in Neoclassical and Credit Approaches to Money
Christine Desan, Harvard Law School
Neoclassical and credit approaches to money represent dramatically different theories of value. According to the way money is created, individuals will not be equally situated in the process that generates prices.
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The Key to Value (2.0): The Debate Over Commensurability in Neoclassical and Credit Approaches to Money”
Current Scholarship
Banking on a Curve: How to Restore the Community Reinvestment Act
Peter Conti-Brown, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Brookings Institution; and Brian D. Feinstein, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 has failed to meaningfully reduce the prevalence of “banking deserts” across lower-income communities or to reduce the racial wealth gap. As a corrective, banks should be graded on a curve, which would enable the CRA to fulfill its promise: to expand access to credit, spur investment in overlooked areas, and combat racial inequities through the financial system.
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Banking on a Curve: How to Restore the Community Reinvestment Act”
Current Scholarship
Towards a sociology of state investment funds? sovereign wealth funds and state-business relations in Saudi Arabia
Alexis Montambault Trudelle, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh
What kind of power relations are maintained or established in the process of sovereign wealth funds development? This article contributes to rentier state debates and broader political economy scholarship by showing how state investment funds hinge on ancillary networks of social institutions, often generated from ingrained formal and informal interactions between states and society.
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Towards a sociology of state investment funds? sovereign wealth funds and state-business relations in Saudi Arabia”
Current Scholarship
The power of folk ideas in economic policy and the central bank–commercial bank analogy
Sebastian Diessner, Leiden University, The Hague, Netherlands
This article argues that policy-makers’ non-expert or ‘folk’ ideas can affect policy outcomes in a way that challenges the assumption of economic policy-making being guided by expert ideas emanating from the realm of economics and other sciences.
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The power of folk ideas in economic policy and the central bank–commercial bank analogy”
Current Scholarship
Financialized savings in public water governance: An illustrative case study in the arid American West
Christopher Gibson, California State University, Fullerton
How does financialization of the economy impact public governance of natural resources? This article interrogates the influence that financial markets have over public policy, showing that elected governance officials engage in the commodification of money, encouraging the further commodification of environmental resources.
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Financialized savings in public water governance: An illustrative case study in the arid American West”
Current Scholarship
Sovereign Solvency as Monetary Power
Karina Patrício Ferreira Lima, University of Leeds School of Law
This article reconceptualizes sovereign insolvency from a money-centred perspective. Sovereign insolvencies are inherent to the asymmetric character of global liquidity, rather than solely the product of fiscal misfortunes or mismanagement. To correct those asymmetries, it is necessary to reset the international monetary system.
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Sovereign Solvency as Monetary Power”
Current Scholarship
Gold Clauses in the Capital Markets of the Early Twentieth Century
David Fox, University of Edinburgh
This paper scratches beneath the doctrinal analysis of gold clauses to the commercial and political purposes served by such clauses. It considers gold-clause contracts as historical instances of the early international bond markets in operation, and the litigation over them as one reaction to the financial instability of the era.
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Gold Clauses in the Capital Markets of the Early Twentieth Century”
Current Scholarship
The Asset Economy Strikes Again
Martijn Konings, University of Sydney
The Federal Reserve’s bid to “get wages down” reflects the enduring hold of neoliberal thought at the highest levels of economic policymaking.
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The Asset Economy Strikes Again”
Fall 2022
Money, Sanctions and International Law
Contributors: Rawi Abdelal/Alexandra Vacroux, Charlotte Beaucillon, Ben Coates, Anna Gelpern, David Singh Grewal, Daniel Nielson, Stephen Park/Suzanne Katzenstein, Adam Tooze.
This roundtable deals with questions about the system of international monetary production, international law, and politics that have come into sharp relief in the context of economic
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Money, Sanctions and International Law”
Current Scholarship
What do indebted employees do? Financialisation and the decline of industrial action
Giorgos Gouzoulis, University of Bristol, UK
This paper argues that household indebtedness is a missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to explaining why aggregate industrial action rates have been on the decline over the last five decades.
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What do indebted employees do? Financialisation and the decline of industrial action”
Current Scholarship
Regional Monetary Standards and Medieval Bracteates
Roger Svensson
In the Middle Ages, tens of thousands types of uni-faced bracteate coins were struck in the period 1140−1520.
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Regional Monetary Standards and Medieval Bracteates”