Academic literature on the topic 'Monetary institutionalism'

Abstract This article explores a subject, which is still absent in Brazilian legal research: the intersection between law, global economic governance, and gender inequality. It critically examines how international organizations, mainly the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are gender mainstreaming their recommendations on economic rules and policies. The article also builds a theoretical framework that draws on two institutionalist approaches: feminist and legal institutionalism.

The institutional approach in economic science arose, as is known, more than a century ago and is now called "the original institutional economics." In the middle of the last century, an alternative version of this approach emerged, called the "new institutional economics". Over the past forty years, in the institutional approach, it has been declared the creation of a significant number of new economic institutionalisms, such as cognitive, critical, monetary, “incomplete”, “new new”, generic, post-institutionalism, post-Keynesian, and legal institutionalisms. This article is devoted to the analysis of the main provisions of the listed above institutionalisms in economics, in order to answer the question whether they are alternatives to the previously created original and new institutional economics, or whether they clarify some details in these basic institutionalisms. The study showed that the most developed part of the institutionalisms that have arisen in recent decades expands the fields and methods of research within either the original institutionalism or the new institutional economics, without suggesting the grounds that would go beyond the foundations of the named "basic" institutionalisms. Based on this, the article concludes that the growth in the number of institutionalisms indicates the development of "basic" institutionalisms, and not that they have exhausted the research opportunities inherent in them.

This paper tests the explanatory capacities of different versions of new institutionalism by examining the Australian case of a general transition in central banking practice and monetary politics: namely, the increased emphasis on low inflation and central bank independence. Standard versions of rational choice institutionalism largely dominate the literature on the politics of central banking, but this approach (here termed RC1) fails to account for Australian empirics. RC1 has a tendency to establish actor preferences exogenously to the analysis; actors' motives are also assumed a priori; actor's preferences are depicted in relatively static, ahistorical terms. And there is the tendency, even a methodological requirement, to assume relatively simple motives and preference sets among actors, in part because of the game theoretic nature of RC1 reasoning. It is possible to build a more accurate rational choice model by re-specifying and essentially updating the context, incentives and choice sets that have driven rational choice in this case. Enter RC2. However, this move subtly introduces methodological shifts and new theoretical challenges. By contrast, historical institutionalism uses an inductive methodology. Compared with deduction, it is arguably better able to deal with complexity and nuance. It also utilises a dynamic, historical approach, and specifies (dynamically) endogenous preference formation by interpretive actors. Historical institutionalism is also able to more easily incorporate a wider set of key explanatory variables and incorporate wider social aggregates. Hence, it is argued that historical institutionalism is the preferred explanatory theory and methodology in this case.

Scholars working on the history of economics and economic governance assume national income accounting emerged naturally out of Keynesian concerns with economic growth and wartime needs. This paper provides an alternative and more complex genealogy, arguing instead that income accounting was born out of a governmental project, implemented by institutionalist economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) during the interwar period, to manage “the business cycle.” Bridging the literatures on the history of economic policymaking of the interwar period and the postwar triumph of “American Keynesianism,” it shows that institutionalists developed income accounting as a knowledge infrastructure to monitor inter-sectoral imbalances that generated cyclical fluctuations. Called the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) System, this infrastructure constructed “the economy” as a composite statistical object, composed of many disparate, nonfungible substantive elements that could not have been otherwise patched into a coherent whole. Wrapping these elements into the veil of money, the NIPA System became the interface through which policymakers intervened in intersectoral imbalances at the level of monetary flows with fiscal tools.

In 2019, a textbook “Macroeconomics” was published in London, on the pages of which the authors presented a new monetary doctrine — Modern Monetary Theory, MMT, — an unorthodox concept based on the postulates of Post-Keynesianism, New Institutionalism, and the theory of Marxism. The attitude to this scientific concept in the scientific community is ambiguous. A smaller part of scientists actively support this doctrine, which is directly related to state monetary and fiscal stimulation of full employment, public debt servicing and economic growth. Others, the majority of economists, on the contrary, strongly criticize MMT, arguing that the new theory hides simple left-wing populism, designed for a temporary and short-term effect. This article considers the origins and the main provisions of MMT, its discussions with the mainstream, criticism of the basic tenets of MMT, and also assesses possible prospects for the development of MMT in the medium term.

The custom of burning mock-money as a symbolic offering of nutrients and sustenance to one's ancestors in the Afterlife is here analysed in terms of its economic meaning and significance. The theme is treated from two different angles. One is that of the political economy of the gift, which concerns itself with the final uses to which society conveys its economic surplus. The other is that of monetary institutionalism, which seeks to understand what the practice itself actually represents in light of the monetary arrangements that rule the economic exchange within the community itself. The thesis is that, at a first remove, the custom appears to fall into the category of “wasteful expenditure,” in that it is not manifestly conducive to any augmentation of the system's efficiency. But on a subtler level, it is not precisely so for two orders of reasons. First, because the custom is habitually accompanied by subsidiary donations; second, because, in this donative moment, the custom importantly reveals, through its conversion of real cash into “sacrificial” token-money, a constitutive yet hidden, property of money, namely its perishability.

With the rise of China, reforming the global governance institutions has become an important part of China’s diplomacy. Based on whether to build new international rules or reinterpret or redeploy the existing ones, we can divide the rising power’s paths in global governance reform into four types: displacement, layering, conversion and avoidance. Why does China adopt different paths toward reforming the existing international institutions which are dominated by the U.S.? Building on the theory of “gradual institutional change” in historical institutionalism, this article argues that the veto capability of the established power and the flexibility of the existing international institution are two determinants of the rising power’s path selection in global governance reform. It applies this theoretical framework to explain China’s behaviour in four issue areas: sovereign credit rating, the international monetary system, free trade agreements and multilateral development banks. In sovereign credit rating, the strong veto capability of the U.S. and the low flexibility of the existing international credit rating institution make China adopt the path of avoidance. In the international monetary system, the strong veto capability of the U.S. and the high flexibility of the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights make China adopt the path of layering. In free trade agreements, the weak veto capability of the U.S. and low flexibility of the Trans-Pacific Partnership make China adopt the path of displacement. In multilateral development banks, the weak veto capability of the U.S. and high flexibility of World Bank rules make China adopt the path of conversion.

Fiscal policy surveillance, including the possibility to impose financial sanctions, has been an important feature of Economic and Monetary Union since its inception. With the reform of fiscal rules in the aftermath of the financial and sovereign debt crisis, coercive provisions have been made stricter and the Commission has formally gained power vis-à-vis the Council. Nevertheless, sanctions under the Stability and Growth Pact for budgetary non-compliance have so far not been imposed. This article asks why the Commission has until now refrained from proposing such sanctions. Using minimalist process-tracing methods, three post-crisis cases in which the imposition of fines was possible, are analysed. Applying an adaptation of normative institutionalism, it is argued that the mechanism entitled “normative-strategic minimum enforcement” provides an explanation of why no sanctions are imposed in the cases studied: Given that the Commission does not perceive punitive action as appropriate, it strategically refrains from applying the enforcement provisions to their full extent.

Economic resilience of the system is one of the main indicators that characterizes its qualitative and quantitative aspects, response to external and internal shocks and challenges. The problem of resilience becomes especially important in extreme situations (economic and financial crises, ecological and natural disasters: typhoons, floods, earthquakes, etc., political revolutions, military conflicts). The current Russian-Ukrainian war has become a serious test of the stability of the domestic economy, in which relative macroeconomic balance is ensured in extremely difficult conditions due to the maximum mobilization of domestic resources and effective foreign aid. An important component is institutional stability, i.e. operational response to changes in the economic situation of authorities and management at all levels, legislative institutions, financial and banking institutions, foreign economic sphere, attention to such attributes of institutionalism as trust, social optimism, mentality, traditions, habits, etc. In a generalized form, at the theoretical level, institutional sustainability is proposed to be considered in the article in the context of institutional logic in three hypostasises at the micro-, macro-, and geo-economic levels. Institutionalism, including economic theory, is dominated by traditional, formal logic, which mainly uses natural (scientific) language. Consciously or intuitively, the main laws of logic are taken into account: identity, contradiction, the Law of Exclusion, sufficient reason. The logic of evolutionism is considered the basis of institutional logic, which provides a general idea of changes in all components of the institutional environment. In the institutional economic theory, two levels of institutional logic are visible: the macro level (Veblen and the old American school, North) and the micro level (Coase, Williamson, etc.). In the publications of the last quarter of the 20th century the logic of the global (mega) level is also analyzed. Evolutionism is the basis of the logical construction of institutional logic in economic theory. Generalizing indicators that synthesize different approaches of institutional logic regarding economic sustainability are the institutional logic of sustainability (ILS) and the logical index of sustainability (LIS). Institutional logic of the micro- level was initiated by R. Coase, continued by O. Williamson and others. The logic of transaction costs of R. Coase is formulated in two theorems: regarding zero costs, ownership and economic results, and the principle of internalization. The second theorem was called "comparative logic of economic organization". In critical relation to both of Coase's theorems, they remain basic constructs of micro-level resilience. Among the indicators and criteria of macro-level economic resilience, monetary components are of leading importance, which, under the conditions of a free market, provide a kind of warning signals to the economic system as a whole. A feature of this approach was the transformation of the monetary component into a system of "monetary and financial analysis". This reflects fundamental qualitative changes in recent decades regarding the structure of the economy, in which the financial subsystem acquires dominant (key) importance, affecting aggregated macroeconomic indicators: growth, inflation, employment, etc. Globalization, that is, the mega-level, its economic resilience, inevitability and irreversibility are characterized by three deterministic logics: technical (technological), economic and political.

Cette thèse étudie les cryptomonnaies (CM) Bitcoin et Ethereum et leur gouvernance, en interrogeant les prétentions libérales-technicistes qui les présentent comme des monnaies acéphales, décentralisées, autonomes, neutres et apolitiques du fait de leur nature technique. Ces prétentions reposent sur un « technologisme » dissociant technique et société, un premier écueil à dépasser, dominant dans la littérature axée sur les caractéristiques techniques des CM. Le second écueil est le « sociologisme » inverse, réduisant toute nature socio-politique à leur origine libertarienne. Au-delà, les CM sont des infrastructures composites et négociées où technique et monde social s’influencent mutuellement dans un va-et-vient politique. Notre approche croise l’institutionnalisme monétaire, l’ethnographie économique et la sociologie des sciences et techniques, et repose sur des matériaux quantitatifs et qualitatifs tirés d’une enquête multiniveau (en ligne et hors ligne) alliant analyses documentaires, immersions participantes, observations participantes et entretiens. La gouvernance des CM est examinée au travers de deux crises : Bitcoin CVE 2018 et le Hard Fork d’Ethereum suite à « The DAO ».La conception de Bitcoin et Ethereum, notamment le consensus PoW et l’émission monétaire des UCN, résulte de négociation hybride idéelle et matérielle. Un protocole ne devient CM qu’en tant qu’infrastructure, confronté à des usages, à d’autres arrangements pour s’y connecter, à une maintenance et des évolutions qui en renégocient formes, contenus et normativité. Réductible ni aux desseins de Nakamoto, ni à ses frontières protocolaires, Bitcoin est « sans couture » à l’aune d’un développement carnavalesque en trois phases (preuve de concept, péché et maturation). La comparaison avec Ethereum met en lumière sa propre normativité ainsi que celle de Bitcoin, dont elle vise à s’émanciper. Dans la controverse sur le statut monétaire des CM, nous affirmons que celles-ci sont des monnaies. Nous rejetons les perspectives monétaires orthodoxes – en termes d’exclusivité et d’homogénéité – les reléguant au statut d’actifs financiers, depuis un institutionnalisme monétaire intéressé aux usages. Empiriquement, les CM donnent lieu à des usages en compte et en paiement et sont des monnaies communautaires. Leur singularité monétaire réside dans une logique fiduciaire à consensus distribué : leur valeur et pouvoir d’achat sont garantis par des institutions et des acteurs sociaux dans le cadre d’une gouvernance polycentrique. Le phénomène de crise permet d’identifier deux types de crises de CM - les crises de vulnérabilité et les crises d’évolution – et une gouvernance de crise à deux volets : de huis clos, routinière à consensus local, ou publique, conflictuelle et à consensus global. La première est encadrée par des spécialistes (Core Devs) tandis que, en cas de dissensus, la seconde mobilise largement les parties prenantes pour rechercher une légitimité communautaire à travers des débats et des mesures de consensus. Dans tous les cas, la gouvernance polycentrique permet la formation d’un consensus tout en garantissant traçabilité, vérification et participation aux décisions. Finalement, nous démontrons que le consensus social (espace de la discrétion) prime toujours face aux codes irrespectueux de l’esprit communautaire (espace de la règle)
This thesis studies the Bitcoin and Ethereum CMs and their governance, questioning the liberal-technicist claims that portray them as acephalous, decentralized, autonomous, neutral and apolitical currencies by virtue of their technical nature. These pretensions are rooted in a “technologism” that dissociates technology and society, a first pitfall to overcome, dominant in the literature focused on CMs’ technical traits. The second pitfall is an inverse “sociologism” that reduces any socio-political nature to their libertarian origins. Beyond this, CMs are composite, negotiated infrastructures where technology and the social world mutually influence each other in a political interplay.Our approach crosses monetary institutionalism, economic ethnography and the sociology of science and technology, and relies on quantitative and qualitative material drawn from a multi-level survey (online and offline) combining documentary analysis, participant immersions, participant observations and interviews. CM governance is examined through two crises - Bitcoin CVE 2018 and Ethereum's hard Fork after “The DAO”.The design of Bitcoin and Ethereum, notably the PoW consensus and the monetary issuance of UCNs, results from ideal and material hybrid bargaining. A protocol becomes CM only as an infrastructure, confronted with uses, other arrangements enabling connection, maintenance and evolutions that renegotiate its form, content and normativity. Neither reducible to Nakamoto’s designs nor its protocol boundaries, Bitcoin is ‘seamless’ through its carnivalesque three-phase development (proof of concept, sin, and maturation). In comparison, Ethereum’s own normativity contrasts it with Bitcoin’s, from which it seeks to emancipate. In the controversy surrounding the monetary status of CMs, we assert that CMs are currencies, rejecting orthodox monetary perspectives – in terms of exclusivity and homogeneity – relegating CMs to the status of financial assets. From a monetary institutionalist’s point of view, CMs are empirically used as accounts and payments, and are community currencies. Their monetary uniqueness lies in their unprecedented fiduciary logic of distributed consensus : their value and purchasing power are guaranteed by institutions and social players within the bounds of their polycentric governance. The crisis phenomenon allows us to identify two types of CM crises – vulnerability crises and evolution crises – and a two-fold crisis governance: huis clos, routinized with local consensus or public, conflictual with global consensus. The former is overseen by specialists (Core Dev), while in the event of dissensus, the latter widely mobilizes all stakeholders to seek community legitimacy through debate and consensus-building measures. In all cases, polycentric governance enables consensus-formation while guaranteeing traceability, verification and participation in decision-making. In the end, we find that social consensus (the space of discretion) always takes precedence over disrespectful codes of community spirit (the space of rule)

Cette thèse est articulée autour de deux questions centrales visant à expliquer pourquoi et comment devrait être organisée la Complémentarité entre les Banques et les institutions spécialisées dans la Microfinance (CBM), afin de financer efficacement le développement dans les pays de l’UEMOA : l’Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine. Les aspects bancaires de la théorie de rattrapage économique de Gerschenkron sont adaptés au contexte de la prépondérance de l’économie informelle dans l’UEMOA. L’analyse empirique montre, quant à elle, que les secteurs bancaires et microfinanciers de l’UEMOA sont respectivement réfractaires et peu performants - en termes de rentabilité et d’impact social - pour l’autonomisation du processus de CBM. Relativement à la mise en oeuvre de la CBM, le cadre néoinstitutionnaliste de l’hybridité de la firme est mobilisé en vue d’intégrer et d’expliciter le rôle de l’autorité publique vis-à-vis des acteurs financiers privés, dont ceux du « mobile banking ». Par ailleurs, les « best practices » internationales dans la microfinance servent également de références empiriques et typologiques aux pays de l’UEMOA, en vue d’une coordination publique indirecte ou directe de la CBM
This thesis is based on two central questions whose purpose is to explain why and how the institutional complementarity should be organized between banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs) to effectively finance the development process of WAEMU (West African Economic and Monetary Union) countries. The banking aspects of Gerschenkron’s catch-up theory are adapted to the large informal context of the WAEMU economies. At empirical level, the independent and private processes of Complementarity between Banks and Microfinance institutions (CBM) are scarce in WAEMU as long as banks avoid risks associated with adaptation to microfinance customers, and MFIs are not efficient for infrastructure modernization and expansion. Thus, to implement CBM processes, the neo-institutionalist framework of hybridity of the firm and the international best practices in microfinance are mobilized in order to clarify the role of public authorities towards private financial actors, including the mobile banking operators

Award date: 30 November 2015
Supervisor: Professor Marise Cremona, European University Institute
Member States inter se agreements are a complex legal phenomenon epitomizing the tension between intergovernmental channels of cooperation and supranational structures of integration characterizing the evolution of EU law. EMU inter se agreements, in particular, constitute a unique laboratory to investigate this tension and they help to better understand the legal nature of Member States’ international agreements which display substantive, institutional and teleological proximity to EU law. EU law imposes some restraints on Member States for the conclusion of inter se treaties. This work critically scrutinises both competence-based and procedural-based restraints which are aimed at safeguarding the specific characteristics of EU law and the peculiarities of EU institutionalism. More specifically, the evaluation of inter se treaty-making restraints moves from the consideration that the use of EU Institutions outside of the Treaties’ framework is liable to undermine the very nature of EU institutionalism. The use of institutions outside the EU framework, as devised by the EMU inter se treaties, induces to a reinforcement of contractual visions of Europe premised on the conception of EU institutions as common organs in the hands of Member States. The EU external relations law practice provides interesting solutions to the risk of departure from Institutionalism entailed in the contractual conception of Europe. In particular, the Court’s understanding of mixed agreements suggests an associative institutionalist vision of Europe which is less concerned on the precise apportioning of competences between the EU and its Member States and is more attentive to the procedural framework in which the intergovernmental and the supranational components of the EU jointly operate. This approach could be extended also to inter se patterns of integration by devising the conclusion of inter se mixed agreements, i.e. agreements envisaging the participation of the EU and of some of its Member States in legal venues aimed at fostering the European Integration project.

Historical institutionalism highlights the prevalence of incremental change in international governance. This chapter reinforces this point through an examination of a particularly hard case: the iconic creation of the postwar Bretton Woods international monetary and financial system. Although the 1944 Bretton Woods agreements are widely seen to be a product of power, interests and ideas at a unique historical moment, they were also shaped by a set of incremental institutional changes that pre-dated the negotiations and left important legacies. The Bretton Woods agreements emerged less from a specific moment than from a longer “critical juncture” dating back to the Great Depression.

Abstract As societies recognize the importance of diversity for organizational performance, this has also been embraced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Using sociological institutionalism and constructivism, the chapter highlights the role of ideas and culture in shaping the IMF’s policies. The IMF’s technocratic, hierarchical culture can make it resistant to change, limiting diversity of perspectives and hindering adaptability. Despite introducing new ideas and modest progress on diversification, the IMF still faces challenges in achieving staff diversification. Progress includes shifts in policy, specifically in integrating a gendered analysis into macroeconomic analysis and two influential women at its helm, but there is still much work to do in achieving gender parity of Fund staff. This chapter emphasizes the need for a more diverse recruitment policy that fosters diversity of thought, enabling the IMF to better manage crises and develop policies that are more inclusive and representative of its debtors.

Since 1999, a subset of EU member states—known collectively as the euro area—has delegated exclusive competence for monetary policy to the European Central Bank (ECB), while giving limited powers to the European Commission, ECOFIN, and the Eurogroup in other areas of economic policy. The euro crisis provided the first major test of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), as a sovereign debt crisis spread between member states and threatened to tear the single currency apart. The ECB and two new institutions—the European Stability Mechanism and Euro Summit—helped to keep the euro area together but at significant economic and political cost. EU institutions were better prepared for the initial economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the crisis still produced important institutional changes. The COVID-19 recovery fund Next Generation EU gives the Commission and Council a major new role in economic policy, albeit a temporary one for now. The EMU illustrates three key dimensions of EU institutional politics: the tension between intergovernmental versus supranational institutions, leaders versus followers, and legitimacy versus contestation. It also reveals the explanatory power of new institutionalism among other theoretical perspectives.