CASFI is pleased that Catherine Schenk and Per H. Hansen are in Bonn.
Catherine Schenk is visiting from the University of Oxford where she is the Professor of Economic and Social History. 'I'm excited to be at CASFI to spend time writing my book manuscript on the architecture of the global payments system. This book explores how the structure, network and technologies of cross-border payments evolved from the 1870s (with the dominance of the telegraph and bills of exchange) through to today, when traditional structures are challenged by digital alternatives and geopolitical fragmentation. Global payments are the plumbing of globalisation, but the history of the system is not well documented, so I've spent the past few years reconstructing the story from archival collections around the world. There are important implications for the theme of finance and inequality, e.g. costs of remittances and access to the global system is unequal across countries and communities. It is great to have the opportunity to pull these ideas together at CASFI', says Catherine.
Per H. Hansen is Professor of Business History at Copenhagen Business School. He is studying narratives about bank CEOs and inequality in the interwar years and the Great Financial Crisis. 'In terms of economic and social capital, bankers are part of society’s highest echelons with elaborate social networks. They rarely fall, but when they do, they fall hard. With the outbreak of a financial crisis, almost overnight bankers are categorized as social outcasts for having broken society’s cultural standards for acceptable behavior. In this research project I examine how the boom and bust of the interwar period and the 2000s shaped society’s narratives of an important group of bankers, their banks and the banking system. I analyze how competing narratives about eight prominent bankers from four countries emerged and changed as the media and other voices laid bare their privileged position and loss of same because of their banks’ failure. As a part of this analysis, I examine how competing narratives addressed questions of inequality and lack of fairness in societies shaped by finance capitalism and financialization', he states.