09/03/2023 – Séance 2

Juliette CADIOT (EHESS) et Gilles FAVAREL GARRIGUES (Sciences Po, CERI),
État et corruption en URSS et Russie contemporaine (autour de l’ouvrage La société des voleurs. Propriété et socialisme sous Staline, Ed. EHESS, 2021 et La Verticale du pouvoir. Allégeance et demande d'ordre en Russie poutinienne, La Découverte, 2023).

S'inscrire

Alexander Nützenadel, 

Professor of social and economic history at Humboldt University since 2009. Currently the Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor at LSE.

Monday 27/03/2023 13:30-15:00 - with the Centre d'Histoire, Sciences Po (CHSP)

Location: K.011

Discussant: Paul-André Rosental, Director of the Center of History at Sciences Po

Title: The Long Shadow of 1931: Regulatory Cycles in Comparative Perspective (1930-1980)

Abstract:

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the question of how to regulate banks effectively has received a great deal of scholarly attention. While economic research usually refers to cross-country comparisons, the long-term evolution of regulatory systems is rarely examined. This paper examines one of the longest regulatory cycles in history, triggered by the banking crisis of the 1930s. It explores financial regulation in 12 countries (Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, USA, Japan, Argentina, Greece) between 1920 and 1980. We combine a qualitative study of legal instruments with a quantitative approach, based on the reconstruction of an overall regulatory index. Moreover, we use balance sheet data from commercial banks to measure changing risk exposure of credit banks and financial markets over time. The insolvency risk of large commercial banks is measured with a calculation of the Z-score. Based on this empirical research, the project combines a comparative analysis of national regulatory regimes with a historical perspective. This will allow to answer a variety of fundamental questions: Was national financial regulation based on path dependencies? How important was regime competition? Did regulatory systems converge over time? Has international fragmentation increased risk exposure of banks? What are the political factors that drive regulatory cycles?