‘A Feature, Not a Bug. The US Dollar in the European Monetary Union’ (with Torsten Ehlers)
The European Monetary Union (EMU) is often seen as an attempt to shield Europe from USD dominance. However, as BIS data shows, the USD’s volume and share in EMU cross-border payments has been constantly rising […]
‘Primary Dealers in the Offshore US-Dollar System. Intermediating Treasury and Central Bank Balance Sheets’ (with Will Bateman)
This study analyzes the Primary Dealer model for the issuance and distribution of sovereign debt as a distinctive feature of today’s international monetary system, the Offshore US-Dollar System. Primary dealers are a group of private […]
‘Transformation of the Eurozone Architecture. On Crises and Institutional Change in the Offshore US-Dollar System’ (with Alexandru-Stefan Goghie, Matteo Giordano and Friederike Reimer)
The Eurocrisis was a make-it-or-break-it moment for the EMU with a profound impact on the transformation of the Eurozone architecture. However, its underlying macro-financial causes remain insufficiently understood. While dominant narratives emphasize excessive sovereign debt […]
2025 | ‘Encumbered Security? Vertical and Horizontal Repos in the Euro Area and Their Inherent Ambiguity’ (with Alexandru-Stefan Goghie and Matteo Giordano), Journal of Financial Regulation
Despite the paramount centrality of repurchase agreements (repos) in today’s market-based finance regime, both conceptual and empirical questions about European repo markets are insufficiently explored as contradictory legal and accounting treatments make their on-balance-sheet representation […]
2025 | ‘Rethinking Currency Internationalisation. Offshore Money Creation and the EU’s Monetary Governance’ (with Jens van ‘t Klooster), Journal of European Public Policy
Internationalisation of the euro has for decades eluded EU policymakers. In this article, we develop a novel explanation of the subordinate position of the single currency. To this end, we build on the state of […]
2025 | ‘Schrödinger’s Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agency. The Recovery and Resilience Facility and the Limits to Incremental Fiscal Integration in Europe’ (with Friederike Reimer, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Armin Haas), Journal of European Integration
The Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), introduced as the EU’s main macro-financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is an off-balance-sheet fiscal agency (OBFA) that has been hailed as Europe’s Hamiltonian moment and raised great expectations […]
2024 | ‘Green Macro-Financial Governance in the European Monetary Architecture. Assessing the Capacity to Finance the Net-Zero Transition’ (with Andrei Guter-Sandu and Armin Haas), Competition & Change
The Green Transition to net-zero carbon emissions in Europe requires massive financing efforts, with estimates of 620 billion EUR annually, but the headwinds are substantive. Central banks seem overstretched and busy tightening to combat inflation; treasuries are […]
2023 | ‘Forging Monetary Unification through Novation. The TARGET System and the Politics of Central Banking in Europe’ (with Matteo Giordano), Socio-Economic Review
When Economic and Monetary Union became effective in January 1999, it remained unclear what accounting treatment to choose for claims and obligations that the Eurosystem’s National Central Banks (NCBs) incur against each other in the […]
2023 | ‘Rethinking Monetary Sovereignty. The Global Credit Money System and the State’ (with Jens van ‘t Klooster), Perspectives on Politics
This article proposes a conception of monetary sovereignty that recognizes the reality of today’s global credit money system. Monetary sovereignty is typically used in a ‘Westphalian’ sense that simply denotes the ability of states to […]
2022 | ‘The Transformation of Eurozone Fiscal Governance. Mitigating Fiscal Discipline through a Proliferation of Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies’ (with Andrei Guter-Sandu), New Political Economy
The original Maastricht regime designed the Eurozone’s fiscal segment in a way that sought to keep member states’ treasury budgets balanced by disciplining them through market forces, reducing the overall volume of public indebtedness, prohibiting […]
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 […]
2016 | ‘European Monetary Integration and the Public-Private Money Divide. Can Post-Crisis Reforms Harmonize Private Money Creation in the Eurozone?’
Based on the conceptual framework of the ‘Money View’, this paper argues that European monetary integration until the Eurocrisis only focused on harmonizing public money on a supranational level while neglecting private credit money creation. […]
2016 | ‘EU, US and ASEAN Actorness in G20 Financial Policy‐Making. Bridging the EU Studies – New Regionalism Divide’ (with Kilian Spandler), Journal of Common Market Studies
This article compares the European Union’s (EU) actorness in foreign financial policy to that of the US and ASEAN. It thus contributes to the dialogue between EU studies and the New Regionalism by putting it […]
2013 | ‘Germany and the Crisis of the European Monetary Union. A Phenomenology of Causal Narratives in the German Discourse on the Eurocrisis, 2010-2011’
In the years 2010 and 2011, the Eurocrisis was among the dominant topics in Germany’s political debates. A number of points remained highly contested: What dangers does the Eurocrisis imply for the European Monetary Union […]