My research studies the political economy of the modern credit money system: how it works, how it changes, and how it can be governed. I approach these questions from an institutionalist International Political Economy perspective and draw on the Money View, a contemporary credit theory of money.
In a credit money system, money creation and credit creation follow the same logic of double-entry bookkeeping. Money is a hierarchy of promises to pay, and its boundaries shift over time. I am particularly interested in instruments at the edge of this hierarchy, so-called shadow money, where it is contested what counts as money and who stands behind it.
To study these questions, I have developed the Monetary Architecture framework. It maps the monetary and financial system as a web of interlocking balance sheets: central banks, commercial banks, non-bank financial institutions, and a fiscal ecosystem of treasuries and off-balance-sheet fiscal agencies (OBFAs). These maps show three features that conventional accounts tend to miss. The state is not a single balance sheet but dispersed over many. Private finance includes shadow banks as well as banks. And money creation has long escaped the nation state, as US dollars are created offshore around the globe.
My work is organized in four themes:
- Private Credit Money Accommodation: how private money becomes public money in financial crises, from bank notes to stablecoins.
- Offshore Dollar System: how the international monetary system is organized around privately created, publicly backstopped US dollars, and what this means for geoeconomics and security.
- European Monetary Union: how the euro area’s monetary and fiscal architecture has been transformed since the Global Financial Crisis, and how it is embedded in the dollar system.
- Financing Large-Scale Transformations: how states use OBFAs to finance wars, reconstruction, and the green transition.
Since 2023, I have led the Emmy Noether research group OBFA-TRANSFORM at the Global Climate Forum in Berlin. Our data, the Monetary Architecture online tool, and videos are available under Data, Tools & Videos.
