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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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”
Current Scholarship
Cannabis Banking: What Marijuana Can Learn from Hemp
Julie Andersen Hill
Marijuana-related businesses have banking problems. Many banks explain that because marijuana is illegal under federal law, they will not serve the industry.
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Cannabis Banking: What Marijuana Can Learn from Hemp”
Current Scholarship
A Proposition for the Redefinition of the Bank from a Historical Sociolegal Perspective
Reda Mokhtar El Ftouh
Throughout history, banking has been key to the development of fundamental institutions and structures of capitalism, while also having been instrumental in its recurrent crises.
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A Proposition for the Redefinition of the Bank from a Historical Sociolegal Perspective”
Current Scholarship
Banks, Marijuana, and Federalism
Julie Andersen Hill
Although marijuana is illegal under federal law, twenty-three states have legalized some marijuana use. The state-legal marijuana industry is flourishing, but marijuana-related businesses report difficulty accessing banking services.
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Banks, Marijuana, and Federalism”
Current Scholarship
Commodifying Marginalization
Abbye Atkinson
Once pillars of American social provision, public pension funds now rely significantly on private investment to meet their chronically underfunded promises to America’s workers.
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Commodifying Marginalization”
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
Unbundling Banking, Money, and Payments
Dan Awrey
For centuries, our systems of banking, money, and payments have been legally and institutionally intertwined.
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Unbundling Banking, Money, and Payments”
Current Scholarship
Government has always picked winners and losers
David M.P. Freund
A welfare state doesn’t distort the market; it just makes government aid fairer.
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Government has always picked winners and losers”
Current Scholarship
The Cambridge economic tradition and the distribution of the social surplus
Nuno Ornelas Martins
Various research projects in economics developed at Cambridge share common philosophical presuppositions, within what can be termed as the Cambridge economic tradition.
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The Cambridge economic tradition and the distribution of the social surplus”
Current Scholarship
Histories of Bank Supervision
Sean Vanatta
In this essay, I make the case for the historical study of bank supervision—both that historical methods are necessary to understanding the shape and structure of supervision in the present and that the study of supervision will contribute to active and important historiographical debates.
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Histories of Bank Supervision”
Current Scholarship
Consumer Protection after Consumer Sovereignty
Luke Herrine
This article argues for a fundamental rethinking of the function of consumer protection. It is time to abandon welfare economics and adopt what this article refers to as “moral economy”.
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Consumer Protection after Consumer Sovereignty”
Current Scholarship
The aporetic financialisation of insurance liabilities: Reserving under Solvency II.
Charalampos Fytros
The valuation of insurance liabilities has traditionally been dealt with by actuaries, who closely monitored underlying illiquid features
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The aporetic financialisation of insurance liabilities: Reserving under Solvency II.”
Current Scholarship
The emergence of systemic risk: The Federal Reserve, bailouts, and monetary government at the limits
Onur Özgöde
Why does the Federal Reserve bail banks out in violation of a core principle of free-market capitalism: private gain–private loss?
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The emergence of systemic risk: The Federal Reserve, bailouts, and monetary government at the limits”
Current Scholarship
The New Bailments
Danielle D'Onfro
The rise of cloud computing has dramatically changed how consumers and firms store their belongings. Property that owners once managed directly now exists primarily on infrastructure maintained by intermediaries.
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The New Bailments”
Current Scholarship
The Intellectual Origins of Sudan’s “Decades of Solitude,” 1989–2019
Alden Young
The three decades between 1989 and 2019, when the National Salvation regime of Islamists and the military ruled Sudan, are now frequently remembered by international and Sudanese policymakers, politicians, intellectuals, and business elites as “lost decades” or “decades of solitude”
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The Intellectual Origins of Sudan’s “Decades of Solitude,” 1989–2019”
Current Scholarship
Technocratic Pragmatism, Bureaucratic Expertise, and the Federal Reserve
Peter Conti-Brown & David A. Wishnick
The Federal Reserve (Fed) regularly faces novel challenges to its broad statutory mandates. Often, these challenges—from financial crises to pandemics to climate change—raise a critical question.
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Technocratic Pragmatism, Bureaucratic Expertise, and the Federal Reserve”
Current Scholarship
Borrowing Equality
Abbye Atkinson
For the last fifty years, Congress has valorized the act of borrowing money as a catalyst for equality, embracing the proposition that equality can be bought with a loan.
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Borrowing Equality”
Current Scholarship
Does the national debt matter?
L. Randall Wray & Yeva Nersisyan
In this paper, we use the Modern Money Theory framework to analyze whether government debt (and deficits) in a country with its own sovereign currency presents a problem.
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Does the national debt matter?”
Current Scholarship
Banking on Democracy
Mehrsa Baradaran
The financial system is unequal and exclusionary even as it is supported, funded, and subsidized by public institutions.
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Banking on Democracy”
Current Scholarship
Money on the Left Podcast: Money as a Constitutional Project with Christine Desan
Money on the Left Podcast: Money as a Constitutional Project with Christine Desan
The Money on the Left Editorial Collective presents a classic episode from our archives along with a previously unavailable transcript & graphic art. In this episode, we are joined by Christine Desan
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Money on the Left Podcast: Money as a Constitutional Project with Christine Desan”
Current Scholarship
A Route to Commons-Based Democratic Monies? Embedding the Governance of Money in Traditional Communal Institutions
Ester Barinaga
The financial crisis of 2008 resulted, among other, on a popular awareness that the monetary system was not working for the interest of the many.
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A Route to Commons-Based Democratic Monies? Embedding the Governance of Money in Traditional Communal Institutions”
Current Scholarship
Why Financial Regulation Keeps Falling Short
Dan Awry & Kathryn Judge
This article argues that there is a fundamental mismatch between the nature of finance and current approaches to financial regulation.
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Why Financial Regulation Keeps Falling Short”
Current Scholarship
Losing Autonomy: The Norwegian Central Bank During the Second World War
Einar Lie, University of Oslo
In the mid‐twentieth century a number of central banks around the western world lost their operational autonomy and were placed under government control.
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Losing Autonomy: The Norwegian Central Bank During the Second World War”
Current Scholarship
The Capital Commons: Digital Money and Citizens’ Finance in a Productive Commercial Republic
Robert Hockett, Cornell Law School
All societies must address two questions where the organization of productive activity is concerned. The first is whether production will be mainly publicly managed, privately managed, or 'mixed.'
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The Capital Commons: Digital Money and Citizens’ Finance in a Productive Commercial Republic”
Current Scholarship
Digital Currencies, Stablecoins, and the Evolving Payments Landscape
Governor Lael Brainard, Federal Reserve
Speech by Governor Lael Brainard of the Federal Reserve at The Future of Money in the Digital Age, Sponsored by the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Princeton University’s Bendheim Center for Finance, Washington, D.C.
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Digital Currencies, Stablecoins, and the Evolving Payments Landscape”
Current Scholarship
Book Review: Law and Macroeconomics as Mainstream
Bruno Meyerhof Salama, University of California, Berkeley - School of Law
In spite of its name, economic analysis of law is mostly unconcerned with money and markets. In a recently published book.
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Book Review: Law and Macroeconomics as Mainstream”
Winter 2020
Banking: Intermediation or Money Creation
Contributors: Morgan Ricks, Marc Lavoie, Robert Hockett, Saule Omarova, Michael Kumhof, Zoltan Jakab, Paul Tucker, Charles Kahn, Daniel Tarullo, Stephen Marglin, Howell Jackson and Christine Desan, Sannoy Das
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Banking: Intermediation or Money Creation”
Current Scholarship
The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy
Saule T. Omarova, Cornell Law School
The COVID-19 crisis forcefully underscored the urgency of digitizing sovereign money and ensuring broad access to affordable banking services.
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The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy”
Current Scholarship
Seigniorage through Periodic Recoinage: When the Validity of Money Was Restricted in Time
Roger Svensson, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Andreas Westermark,Sveriges Riksbank
A monetary system called periodic re-coinage was used during almost 200 years in large part of medieval Europe.
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Seigniorage through Periodic Recoinage: When the Validity of Money Was Restricted in Time”
Current Scholarship
The Janus Faces of Money, Property, and Governance: Fiscal Finance, Empire, and Race
Jamee Moudud, Sarah Lawrence College
This paper contributes to the literature on racial capitalism by deploying a key insight of the Law and Political Economy tradition, which is that politics acting through the law plays a constitutive role in the monetary hardwiring of economies and their property rights.
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The Janus Faces of Money, Property, and Governance: Fiscal Finance, Empire, and Race”
Current Scholarship
The Key to Value: 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.
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The Key to Value: The Debate over Commensurability in Neoclassical and Credit Approaches to Money”
Current Scholarship
Just Published: Finance and Society, Vol. 6, No. 1
Editors, Finance and Society
The editors of Finance and Society are pleased to announce the publication of vol. 6, no. 1 (2020).
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Just Published: Finance and Society, Vol. 6, No. 1”
Current Scholarship
Colonialism’s Currency: Money, State and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950
Brian Gettler, University of Toronto
Money, often portrayed as a straightforward representation of market value, is also a political force, a technology for
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Colonialism’s Currency: Money, State and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950”
Current Scholarship
Inside the Black Box: Credibility and Situational Power of Central Banks
Ayca Zayim, Mount Holyoke College
Despite the consensus that the power of finance constraints central banks under financial globalization, the variation in their autonomy from market forces at the micro level of monetary policymaking remains underexplored.
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Inside the Black Box: Credibility and Situational Power of Central Banks”
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
The Money Doctors of Seventeenth Century Naples
Francois R. Velde, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
A collection of texts printed in early seventeenth-century Naples exemplifies the intersection between economic history and the history of thought.
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The Money Doctors of Seventeenth Century Naples”
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 ECB and € E-Banknotes
Corinne Zellweger-Gutknecht, University of Basel, Benjamin Geva, Osgoode Hall Law School, Seraina N. Gruenewald, Radbound University Nijmegen
The modern monetary system is controlled by the state and yet linked to private deposit banking. Monetary value held in deposits with commercial banks is known as ‘commercial bank money’ (CoBM).
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The ECB and € E-Banknotes”
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 ‘Kansas City’ Approach to Modern Money Theory
L. Randall Wray, Bard College
Modern money theory (MMT) synthesizes several traditions from heterodox economics.
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The ‘Kansas City’ Approach to Modern Money Theory”
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”
Current Scholarship
‘Funk Money’: The End of Empires, The Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as an Economic and Financial Event
Vanessa Ogle, UC Berkeley
This article explores the question of what happened to European assets in the process of decolonization.
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‘Funk Money’: The End of Empires, The Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as an Economic and Financial Event”
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
Technology v Technocracy: Fintech as a Regulatory Challenge
Saule Omarova, Cornell Law School
This article examines fintech as a systemic force disrupting the currently dominant technocratic paradigm of financial regulation.
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Technology v Technocracy: Fintech as a Regulatory Challenge”
Current Scholarship
Corona Crisis: Lessons of the Stress Test
Perry G Mehrling, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University
Perry Mehrling talks to Boston Economic Club June 3, 2020 about the Coronavirus Crisis.
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Corona Crisis: Lessons of the Stress Test”
Current Scholarship
Jim Crow Credit
Mehrsa Baradaran, University of California Irvine
The New Deal created a separate and unequal credit market—high-interest, non-bank, installment lenders in black ghettos
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Jim Crow Credit”
Current Scholarship
Private Markets, Public Options, and the Payment System
Peter Conti-Brown and David A. Wishnick
The speed at which money moves between people and businesses in the United States lags well behind international standards.
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Private Markets, Public Options, and the Payment System”