Banking Regulation – the Long View

The 1930s Chatham House Study Group on ‘The International Gold Problem’ and the 2011 Chatham House Taskforce on ‘Gold and the International Monetary System’ The economic context of the 1930s Chatham House Study Group was in many ways very different from the modern-day Chatham House Taskforce, of which I am a member, but the focus …

  Catherine Schenk publishes “The Dissolution of a Monetary Union: the Case of Malaysia and Singapore 1963-1974″ in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History Abstract The abrupt separation of Singapore and Malaysia in 1965 set these two states on separate political trajectories, but the economic ties proved more difficult to untangle. This article explores …

  In this paper, Dr Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol sheds light on the current euro crisis by looking at the debates preceding the conception of the euro. How can the early days of EU monetary cooperation help us understand today’s predicament? And what lessons can we draw from them for the euro? Reference Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, The Euro …

Central Bankers from the Failure of the Werner Plan to the creation of the EMS, 1974-1979 This article focuses on the role of central bankers in European monetary cooperation, from the failure of the Werner Plan to the creation of the European Monetary System (EMS). The role of central bankers in the run-up to the …

In the 1950s the sterling area (35 countries and colonies pegged to sterling and holding primarily sterling reserves) accounted for half of world trade and sterling accounted for over half of world foreign exchange reserves. In the early post-war years, this share was even higher – the IMF estimated that official sterling reserves, excluding those …

Integrating an International Political Economy Dimension into European Integration History: the Challenges of the 1970s For anyone interested in international political economy (IPE), the fact that European integration is embedded in global influences is, arguably, a given. Economic and monetary phenomena do not really know borders – or at least not in the same way …

On 28 November 2012, PhD student, Gillian Gallardo, graduated from the University of Glasgow with a M.Sc. in Global Economy as part of the ESRC 1+3. The studentship is tied to the ESRC project ‘The Development of International Financial Regulation and Supervision 1961-1982’. Gillian’s M.Sc. dissertation used previously unexplored IMF archival documents to investigate IMF and …

Summer in the City: the 1974 International Banking Crisis in London and its implications for regulatory reform, paper presented by Professor Catherine Schenk at the Centre of Business History, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, on 9 January 2012 Abstract The relationship between regulators and the regulated in financial services has attracted considerable academic attention, partly because banking …

Gold has come and gone as an administrative anchor to the global monetary system. Gold’s appeal tends to rise when the viability of “fiat money” (that is, money that is used as a medium of exchange for goods and services but is not backed by a specific commodity) is in question, inflation expectations run high, …

Are we bad students or do we have poor teachers: why don’t we learn the lessons from previous crises?   The global financial crisis of 2007/8 revealed many flaws in the system of regulating and supervising the international banking and financial system. This article shows that most of these flaws had been recognised in earlier …

A Europe Made of Money is a new history of the making of the European Monetary System (EMS), based on extensive archive research. Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol highlights two long-term processes in the monetary and economic negotiations in the decade leading up to the founding of the EMS in 1979. The first is a transnational learning process involving …

Governance of Governors: the 1974 international banking crisis and the early deliberations of the Basel Committee   The 2007 global financial crisis exposed a range of weaknesses in the fabric of prudential supervision both at national and international level. Given the failure of the Basel Committee framework to develop effective rules that can be implemented …

Symposium on “The euro: (Greek) tragedy or Europe’s destiny? Economic, historical and legal perspectives on the common currency” (Bayreuth, Germany, 11-12 January 2012)   Dr Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol is invited as a discussant to the Symposium on the Euro Crisis organized by the University of Bayreuth on 11-12 January 2012. For more details, see the conference programme and …

On 19 June 2012, Catherine Schenk took part in the workshop “Financing Globalisation: Lessons from Economic History” organised by the Global Governance Economic Programme at University College, Oxford, with the Blavatnik School of Government. She presented a paper that can be downloaded here.

Jointly organised by the European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) e.V. www.eabh.info and the ERSC-funded project ‘The Development of International Financial Regulation and Supervision (1961-1982)’, University of Glasgow www.bank-reg.co.uk 16-17 January 2014 - Frankfurt am Main, Germany Financial regulation and supervision has gained prominence in the public debate over the past few years. The …