EU469      Half Unit
The Political Economy of Finance in Europe

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

A basic understanding of economics and economic terms is highly recommended.

Politics and policymaking in Europe happen in the context of a global monetary and financial order. This course teaches students a political economy framework to understand and analyse this order, and the privileges and constraints it imposes on financial, non-financial, and state actors in Europe. The introductory segment of the course examines the broad contours of the historical evolution of finance since the late 19th century: The first financial globalisation in the shadow of European colonial expansion; the period of financial de-globalisation following World War II; and the liberalisation period that began in the 1970s. The second part focuses on the key actors (such as institutional capital pools) and the key assets (such as sovereign bonds) in Europe’s contemporary financial system. In order to be able to map the relationships between financial and non-financial actors, students learn how to access, process, and visualise financial data. The third part of the course brings this understanding of finance to bear on political challenges in Europe. What role does finance play in old-age provision? Can governments secure policy space in a world of global capital mobility? By the end of the course, students will have acquired the tools to analyse a broad range of political economy questions through a financial lens.

15 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
1.5 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

A review session will be held at the start of the Spring Term to prepare for the e-exam.

Report

Students must write up a data report in the WT.

• Report parameters: 800 words plus data visualizations.
• Data exercises relate to the topic of the respective week.
• We will mainly work with official data from the financial accounts or the balance of payments, or with important researcher-assembled datasets.
• Example data exercise: “We have learned about the structure of, and access options for, balance of payments data. Select two countries, explain why their international investment positions (IIPs) are interesting to compare, and then use balance of payments data to describe the composition and historical evolution of these countries’ foreign assets and liabilities.”
• Students select a data exercise from a list and submit their reports, in the form of a .pdf file, via Moodle.
• In class, students present and discuss their results in groups.
• Instruction will focus on data download, processing, and visualization in R, but the assignment can be completed using any software, including Excel.

• Abdelal, Ravi (2007). Capital rules. The construction of global finance. Cambridge, M and London, England: Harvard University Press
• Ban, C., & Bohle, D. (2021). Definancialization, financial repression and policy continuity in East-Central Europe. Review of International Political Economy, 28(4), 874–897.
• Barta, Z., & Johnston, A. (2023). Rating Politics: Sovereign Credit Ratings and Democratic Choice in Prosperous Developed Countries. Oxford University Press.
• Braun, Benjamin & Koddenbrock, Kai (eds.) (2022). Capital Claims: Power and Global Finance. Routledge.
• Cordelli, C., & Levy, J. (2022). The Ethics of Global Capital Mobility. American Political Science Review, 116(2), 439–452.
• Gabor, D. (2023). The (European) derisking state. Stato e Mercato, 2023(1), 53–84.
• Reinhart, Carmen M., & Sbrancia, M. Belen (2015). Debt Liquidation. Economic Policy (April), 291-333.

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period

The summative assessment will take the form of an e-exam in the Spring Term. E-exams are assessments run under invigilated exam conditions on campus. Students will complete the assessment using software downloaded to their personal laptops.