Hierarchical and Hybrid Money on a Fractured Continent: Europe’s Monetary Architecture after the Eurocrisis

在我的研究中，我致力于使用货币观点的概念工具来发展货币体系中制度变化的政治经济学理论--货币观点是一种新兴的关于现代信贷货币体系的功能主义文献。这个项目将继续我将货币观点应用于欧洲货币联盟(EMU)架构转型的工作。这将带来现有货币体系中公共和私人、国家和超国家货币创造的独特分层和混合结构。该项目利用与一组国际研究人员合作的基于案例研究的制度主义研究设计，追溯了欧元、欧洲央行(ECB)和更广泛的欧元区金融体系从2007-09年全球金融危机和2009-12年欧洲危机到今天的货币现实的转变。在欧洲货币联盟架构的原始设计中，欧洲央行发行超国家高性能货币，而私人银行和影子银行体系中的货币创造仍然主要是国家货币。2009年，在经历了十年的一帆风顺之后，欧洲危机将欧洲货币联盟带到了崩溃的边缘。内生的危机动态和随之而来的政治改革导致了多层次货币集团内货币创造方式的深刻变化：银行和影子银行通过存款和回购创造的私人信贷货币大幅减少，但自动被以TARGET2余额形式创造的新形式的公共信贷货币所补偿。与此同时，在欧盟成员国和欧盟机构之间的决策机制范围内实施了各种政治改革。欧洲央行--最初被认为是一个以规则为基础、受到政治约束的机构--走出了危机，成为欧洲货币联盟力量平衡中的主导者，它拥有很高的自由裁量权，用来通过量化宽松(QE)启动新形式的公共货币创造。因此，今天的欧洲货币联盟的架构与最初计划的架构有很大不同。然而，它与预期中的欧洲“超级国家”并不完全相符，后者拥有成熟的欧盟政府、财政部和公共债务，而许多最初的政策制定者曾预期，这是一种准目的论发展的结果。在危机和政治干预推动的体制转型之后，欧洲货币联盟是一只特殊的野兽，公共和私人信贷货币创造在国家和国际各个层面以一种历史上前所未有的方式组织起来，迄今尚未被系统捕获。这个项目就是为了填补这一空白。它将分析私人和公共货币创造机制在欧洲危机期间和之后发生了怎样的变化，从而在总体上改变了欧洲货币联盟的架构。随后，它将开发一种政治经济学解释，以对这一过程进行理论分析。

In my research, I work on the development of a political-economic theory of institutional change in monetary systems using the conceptual tools of the Money View—an emerging functionalist literature on modern credit money systems. This project will continue my work of applying the Money View to the transformation of the European Monetary Union’s (EMU) architecture. This will bring out the unique hierarchical and hybrid structure of public and private, national and supranational money creation of the existing monetary architecture. Using a case study-based institutionalist research design in collaboration with a group of international researchers, the project traces the transformation of the Euro, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the wider Eurozone financial system through the 2007-9 Global Financial Crisis and the 2009-12 Eurocrisis onto today’s monetary reality.In the original design of the EMU architecture, the ECB was issuing supranational high-powered money while money creation in the private banking and shadow banking systems remained predominantly national. In 2009, after a decade of smooth sailing, the Eurocrisis brought the EMU at the brink of collapse. The endogenous crisis dynamics and the ensuing political reforms led to profound changes of the way in which money creation takes place within the multilayered currency bloc: Private credit money creation by banks and shadow banks via deposits and repos was sharply reduced, but automatically compensated by new forms of public credit money creation in the form of TARGET2 balances. At the same time, various political reforms were implemented within the boundaries of the EU decision-making mechanisms between member states and EU institutions. The ECB—initially conceived of as a rule-based and politically constrained institution—came out of the crisis as the dominant player in the EMU’s equilibrium of forces, with high discretionary powers that it used to embark on new forms of public money creation via Quantitative Easing (QE).In consequence, today’s EMU’s architecture differs profoundly from the one that had been initially planned. Yet, it does not remotely correspond to the expected European "super state" with a full-fledged EU government, treasury and public debt that many of the original policy-makers had expected as the result of a quasi-teleological development. After the institutional transformation driven by crisis and political intervention, the EMU is an idiosyncratic beast in which public and private credit money creation is organized across various national and international layers in a historically unprecedented way that has not yet been systematically captured. This project sets out to fill this gap. It will analyze how the mechanisms of private and public money creation have changed during and after the Eurocrisis and have thus transformed the EMU architecture in general. Subsequently, it will develop a political-economic explanation to theorize on this process.