Dr. Steffen Murau| steffenmurau.com

International Monetary System

‘Decoding Dollar Dominance: The Global Credit View on the Monetary System in International Political Economy’ (with Herman Mark Schwartz)

This article contrasts the Sovereign Currency View (SCV) and the Global Credit View (GCV) on the monetary system in International Political Economy (IPE) regarding four crucial assumptions: endogenous credit creation versus transaction costs and loanable […]

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‘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 […]

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‘Re-assessing Fragmentation of the Euro Area Banking System. Offshore Channels for Cross-Border Banking Activities’ (with Torsten Ehlers)

It is an established assessment that since the Eurocrisis, the Euro area banking system has been fragmented. Representing the Eurozone’s monetary architecture as a web of interlocking balance sheets, we carve out four different types […]

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‘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 […]

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2023 | ‘International Monetary Hierarchy through Emergency US-Dollar Liquidity. A Key Currency Approach’ (with Fabian Pape and Tobias Pforr), Competition & Change

The notion that the international monetary system is hierarchical has become increasingly common, but the nature, causes, and shape of international monetary hierarchy remain vague. In this article, we develop a monetary theory of international […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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