Where was the money?

Members of the Glocobank team took part in a 2-day workshop at the Austrian National Bank (Oesterreichische Nationalbank) on 6-7 October exploring different approaches to the geography of banking and money. The papers ranged from case studies of France, Italy, Portugal, USSR, Germany and Britain from pre-industrial to modern times. Key themes included how the branching networks of commercial and central banks operated in Europe and the finance of cross-border trade through bills of exchange and correspondent banking both across borders and within national payments systems. The collection and digitisation of new data from handbooks, bank and central bank archives is particularly exciting as it allows fresh quantitative research on these topics.

Marco Molteni presents on correspondent banking around the 1907 crisis

From the Glocobank team, PI Catherine Schenk gave a keynote lecture on ‘The evolution of the global payment system: public and private interests in international banking networks’, Thibaud Giddey presented his findings on ‘Luxembourg’s international banking centre: evidence from correspondent banking networks’ and Marco Molteni & Wilfried Kisling presented their work (with Sebastian Alvarez) on the way correspondent bank links influenced how individual banks felt the impact of the 1907 financial crisis. The workshop was a great success, creating new connections especially between researchers in Vienna and Oxford. The workshop was organised by Maria Stella Chiaruttini and Clemens Jobst (both University of Vienna) and Marianna Astore (Paris School of Economics). It was attended by a range of scholars from Europe and Singapore as well as from the Austrian National Bank and the Banque de France.

Thibaud Giddey on Luxembourg and correspondent banking networks, 1960-1990