A collaboration of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) and the University of Manchester (Initiative for Global Law and Political Economy, Law and Technology Initiative, and Political Economy Centre)
Introduction
Approaches to money and finance in economics typically discount core dynamics: monetary models often abstract from finance (e.g., monetarist or new Keynesian), while financial models tend to ignore the temporal and structural role of money (e.g., Wicksellian traditions). When money is addressed, it is frequently framed in narrowly domestic terms that privilege fiat authority while overlooking international constraints—or, conversely, in global terms that neglect the institutional capacities of governments and banking systems. In this context, Money as if Finance Mattered workshop series focuses on developing a credit money approach that moves away from representative agent models and sectoral aggregates toward modeling a liquidity based hierarchy of dynamic, time-indexed balance sheets, positioned within interlocking relations dominated by settlement constraint.
Central focus of the workshop revolves around:
1. Balance sheet relations and interactions: Financial obligations span agents and institutions, creating layered dependency structures that amplify stress and redistribute
liquidity pressures.
2. Endogenous risk: Risk emerges within the system as liquidity mismatches grow during expansions. Crises are triggered when settlement constraints bind and positions become non-viable.
3. Monetary hierarchy and design: Monetary systems are institutionally stratified. Issuance power, access to settlement, and liquidity support are unequally distributed—both within and across borders.
4. Reflux dynamics: Money issuance entails a corresponding need for settlement. Circulation is both driven and constrained by the mechanisms that extinguish liabilities.
This session applies this lens across five domains:
1. The nature of money and financial instruments, and their entanglement with the non-financial economy;
2. Debt management, with specific attention to sovereign issuance and public finance;
3. The architecture of FX markets, swap arrangements, and eurodollar-based liquidity;
4. The system-wide effects of derivatives, shadow banking, and synthetic instruments;
5. The operational space of monetary and fiscal policy, including its potential and limits.
Format
This workshop will invite young scholar participants to submit a set of questions regarding the current state of monetary and financial analysis as they apply it in their research. These will be
shared with speakers who will in turn prepare talks that address foundations of economic analysis and the potential ways to develop it in the future to take a more coherent account of money and
finance. The speakers will share literature that will relate to their talks ahead of the workshop and this will be obligatory reading for all of the participants. The workshop will include an opening
session where participants will comment upon the questions, talks by speakers with extensive Q&A portions, and a final session where participants will discuss the takeaways of the workshop.
