‘State Finance Beyond the Core Budget. Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies in Germany’s Fiscal Ecosystem’ (with Gregor Laudage, Armin Haas, and Andrei Guter-Sandu)
The state as a financial actor is commonly imagined to be a unitary entity that interacts with the wider financial system via its core budget operated by the treasury that generates inflows via taxes and […]
‘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 […]
‘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 […]
‘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 […]
‘Encumbered Security. Conceptualizing Vertical and Horizontal Repos in the Euro Area’ (with Alexandru-Stefan Goghie and Matteo Giordano)
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 […]
‘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 […]
‘Rethinking Currency Internationalisation. Offshore Money Creation and the EU’s Monetary Governance’ (with Jens van ‘t Klooster)
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 […]
‘Schrödinger’s Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agency. The Recovery and Resilience Facility and the Limits to Incremental Fiscal Integration in Europ’ (with Friederike Reimer, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Armin Haas)
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 […]
‘The Mefo Operation. A Macro-Financial Analysis of Hjalmar Schacht’s Shadow Money Scheme’ (with Armin Haas, Friederike Reimer, and Andrei Guter-Sandu)
In the summer of 1931, Germany faced the nadir of the Great Depression. After the Machtergreifung of the Nazis in 1933, Hjalmar Schacht was appointed president of the Reichsbank and invented the “Mefo operation” to […]
‘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 […]