The Political Economy of Regulatory Devices

The Case of Macro-Prudential Regulation in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis
Ideologies, Discourses and the Fabric of Evidence and Devices in Macro-Prudential Regulation

Colloquium organized by Matthias Thiemann (Sciences Po Paris, 2016-2017 Paris IAS fellow), with the support of the Paris IAS, Sciences Po Centre d'études européennes and the CNRS.

Presentation

This colloquium addresses the pathways macroprudential financial regulation has taken, starting from crisis diagnosis to final measures taken. Macro-prudential regulation, the regulation of finance from a systemic perspective rather than a perspective on individual entities, has been touted as the big new regulatory idea after the financial crisis (Haldane 2009), bringing about a large academic research agenda as well as a flurry of “macroprudential” regulatory activity. Researchers have detected an “ideational shift” post-crisis (Baker 2013), however substantial measures for regulation have largely failed to materialize. Over the course of the last 9 years, the actual impact of this new kind of regulation seems to be rather modest. While some measures have been taken to increase the resilience of the system, there is limited to no intervention in the boom and bust cycle of financialized capitalism (what has become known as the “financial cycle” in macroprudential research, Borio 2012). How can this gap between rhetoric and regulatory measures be explained?

Program

9:00  Introduction Workshop

9:10 - 10:40  Session 1: The overall ambition of macroprudential regulation

The Macroprudential Turn: Revolution or Policy Add-on?
Bart STELLINGA (The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy)

Macroprudential Regulation: The Revolution that Wasn’t
Matthias THIEMANN (Sciences Po Paris)

10:55 - 12:55  Session 2: The regulation of liquidity pre- and post-crisis

Regulation of Liquidity before and After the Crisis?
Anastasia NESVETAILOVA (City University London)

The Resurrection of Liquidity: the Case of the Repo Market and its Re-Politicization
Marius BIRK (Goethe University Frankfurt)

Divisions of Regulatory Labour
Leon WANSLEBEN (London School of Economics)

Lunch Break

14:30 - 16:00  Session 3: Central bank intransparency and the performativity of regulatory discourse

Le discours régulateur, une composante du discours performatif des banquiers centraux ? (presentation in English)
Frederic LEBARON (ENS Cachan)

Who controls capital? Varieties of macroprudential stress testing and the political economy of central bank non-transparency
Nathan COOMBS (University of Edinburgh)

16:30 - 18:00  Session 4: From Ideas to Regulations put into action

Ideational Pathways to Regulation: The role of Central Bank Economists and Academia in Producing Macroprudential Regulation
Matthias THIEMANN, Edin IBROCEVIC and Sviateslau SIVAGRAKAU (Sciences Po Paris)

The Politics of Macroprudential regulation: Methodological Reconsiderations
Cornel BAN (Boston University)

18:15 - 19:00  Concluding Panel Discussion

Intervention by Sam MCPHILEMY (Bank of England), then open discussion