Dr. Steffen Murau| steffenmurau.com

2021 | ‘Financial Globalization as Positive Integration. Monetary Technocrats and the Eurodollar Market in the 1970s’ (with Benjamin Braun and Arie Krampf), Review of International Political Economy

International political economy (IPE) has explained financial globalization as the result of states deciding to open up and liberalize domestic financial systems. Complementing this ‘negative integration’ view, we present a theory of financial globalization during the 1970s that emphasizes the importance of ‘positive integration.’ Credit money systems are characterized by public-private infrastructural entanglements, the management of which require substantial institutional work by monetary technocrats, both at the domestic and at the international level. To illustrate our theory, we trace the expansion of the Eurodollar market during the 1970s. Drawing on archival records from the ‘Standing Committee on the Euro-currency Market’ at the Bank for International Settlements, we show how this group of G-10 central bankers sought to elevate the management of infrastructural entanglements from the domestic to the international level. By ensuring that the Eurodollar market did not interfere with domestic monetary governability, while seeking to provide protection for issuers of Eurodollars, monetary technocrats helped establish the institutional infrastructure for the expansion and globalization of the offshore US dollar system.

Presentations at the Politics of Money conference, Brighton (05/2018), the SASE conference, Kyoto (06/2018), the International Studies Association’s annual convention, Toronto (03/2019), the ECPR Joint Workshop Sessions, Mons (04/2019)

Co-authors:
Benjamin Braun, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne
Arie Krampf, Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo and Ben Gurion University

Download link:
Review of International Political Economy

Related articles

2021 | ‘The Hierarchy of the Offshore US-Dollar System. On Swap Lines, the FIMA Repo Facilities and Special Drawing Rights’ (with Fabian Pape and Tobias Pforr), GEGI Study February 2021

While it has become common to regard the international monetary system as hierarchical, the nature, shape and origin of this hierarchy remain often vague. Taking on board insights of critical macro-finance, this GEGI Study conceptualizes […]

Learn More

2022 | ‘After the Allocation. What Role for the Special Drawing Rights System?’ (with Fabian Pape and Tobias Pforr), INET Working Paper

In August 2021, the IMF made a new SDR allocation to help ease pandemic-induced financial strains in the Global South. This paper assesses the potential of the SDR system to address debt- related problems in […]

Learn More

2020 | ‘A Macro-Financial Model of the Eurozone Architecture Embedded in the Global Offshore US-Dollar System’, GEGI Study July 2020

It is a convention to say that the Eurozone architecture is ill-constructed and deficient. However, monetary architecture is not a well-defined term in monetary theory, and there is no consensus what the Eurozone architecture is beyond being […]

Learn More