Dr Wilfried Kisling

Wilfried Kisling is an Assistant Professor in Economic and Social History in the Department of Socioeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics, and an Associate Researcher at the University of Oxford History Faculty. His research examines the historical role of financial institutions in economic growth and development. Within this broader research field, he has three main lines of investigation.

Firstly, he studies the role of banks in financing trade and their capacity to promote foreign trade by providing financial and informational assistance abroad in the second half of the nineteenth century until World War I. Secondly, he investigates foreign debt defaults in Latin America and the lending policies and strategies of British banks in financing governments in the second half of the 20th century. In particular, he focuses on the question of if and how foreign debt defaults influenced banks’ decision to (re-)lend to a country and on what terms. Finally, he is interested in the question of how the internationalization of banking during the first Globalization contributed, or not, to financial stability and the spread of financial crises in the world. 

The latter is also the centre of his research interest with the GloCoBank project, in particular the “Correspondents and Crisis” work package, which will focus on how correspondent bank relationships were affected by cross-border banking crises. Were the networks resilient? Did they convey crisis through liquidity withdrawal or counterparty failure?