Prof. Dr. Laura Rischbieter, Konstanz (Principal Investigator)
Financial crises, like all crises, produce situations that demand forward-looking decisions. The September 2008 decision to let Lehman Brothers fail, for example, is now widely seen as the start of an international crisis of trust in the financial industry. From today’s perspective this political decision of the regulators may seem shortsighted. Those responsible (apparently) expect a very different outcome, but their analysis and decisions were limited by myopia. On what basis did the regulators form the expectations that led to their decision?
This project investigates how assumptions about uncertain economic situations develop, shape expectations about the future, and influence decisions. Taking the case of international financial organizations (IFOs) it will investigate their approaches to crises of sovereign debt. Between the end of Bretton Woods (1971-73) and the Asian crisis of 1997-1998 there were 58 instances of default. As lender of last resort (IMF and the Bank for International Settlements), and agent of debt restructuring (Paris Club), de facto setter of standards (Clubs and Think Tanks), IFOs have played critical roles in such crises. Taking the perspective of international finance organizations and their approaches to sovereign debt crises the project design not only allows individual decisions to be analyzed as historically contingent cases but also permits an investigation of the ways in which the expectations of the actors involved in financial crises changed over time.
Economic sociology, hermeneutics and the sociology of knowledge will provide theoretical approaches for understanding the relationship between expectation formation, crises, and social learning. Case studies of foreign debt crises will be used to demonstrate and explain long-term developments but also breaches in expectation formation.
Publications
Rischbieter, Laura: Januskopf des Kapitalismus. Entscheidungen treffen in Staatsschuldenkrisen nach 1945, Konstanz 2023.
Rischbieter, Laura; Logemann, Jan; Middendorf, Stefanie (eds.), Schulden machen. Praktiken der Staatsverschuldung im langen 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am Main 2023.
Neuner, Ricardo: Die Vermessung des Verbrauchers – Konsumpsychologie und Verhaltenspolitik (1930-1990), Dissertation, Konstanz 2023.
Rischbieter, Laura: Experiences and Expectations in Sovereign Debt Crisis, in: Ingo Köhler, Laetitia Lenel, Alexander Nützenadel and Jochen Streb (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Economic Expectations in Historical Perspective, (forthcoming).