The History of public debt is long and goes back to at least Classical Greece. Though marred by crises, it is mostly a history of innovation. Debt, an instrument that allows us to trade with our future selves, is one of the most important financial innovations in history. States have been among the main borrowers in history for a number of good reasons—from funding public goods to social infrastructure and providing a safety net against large shocks. But as individuals have problems of time inconsistency, so do states and that is reflected in an equally long history of debt crises. States tried to make debt credible by creating new taxes to fund it. The way governments tax has changed over time, partly to meet the needs of their growing debt stocks. Therefore, debt and taxes have had a symbiotic history. The architecture of financial markets was also profoundly influenced by the funding needs of governments and by the willingness of individuals and corporate entities to invest their portfolios in public debt. The debt of credible governments developed into one of the mainstays of financial markets by setting the ‘risk-free’ interest rate and by offering the easiest securities to pledge as collateral for new funding.This conference will showcase new research on key historical innovations—financial, legal, political—that made public debt the powerful instrument it is today. However, innovation is never a linear process, and there have been many cases of false starts and dead ends, as well as recoveries from fiscal crises.
Day 1: Thursday, 26 September 2024
12:30 – 13:30 Registration and light lunch
13:30 – 13:45 WELCOME AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
13:45 – 15:15 SESSION 1: Early Modern Public Finance
Larry Neal (UIUC) “The Forgotten Financiers of the Louisiana Purchase”
Discussant: Juan Flores (Unige)
Christiaan van Bochove (Utrecht), Lars Boerner (Halle-Wittenberg) and Daniel Quint (Wisconsin-Maddison) “Anglo-Dutch Premium Auctions in Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam”
Discussant: Carsten Burhop (Bonn)
15:15 – 15:45 Coffee break
15:45– 17:15 SESSION 2: Networks vs. Markets
Regina Grafe (Cambridge) “Archaic Lending or Precocious Financialization? Spanish American Finance to 1800”
Discussant: Pilar Nogues-Marco (Unige)
Pamfili Antipa (Banque de France) and Walker Hanlon (Northwestern) “Charity Begins at Home—Why Britain resumed the Gold Standard after the French Wars”
Discussant: Nathan Sussman (IHEID)
17:15 – 17:45 Coffee break
17:45– 19:00 KEYNOTE
Barry Eichengreen (UC Berkeley) “Sustained debt reduction: The Jamaica exception”
19:30– 22:00 Reception and Conference Dinner (La Perle du lac)
Day 2: Friday, 27 September 2024
9:00 – 11:15 SESSION 3: The Sinews of Debt Sustainability
Angélica Dominguez-Carsoza (Kiel), Adelina Garamow (DIW Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin) and Josefin Meyer (DIW Berlin) “Global Commodity Markets and Sovereign Risk across 150 Years”
Discussant: Kirsten Wandschneider (Vienna)
Paula Vedoveli (FGV-São Paulo) “The Promises of Growth: Debt Sustainability, National Wealth, and Repayment Capacity”
Discussant: Coskun Tunçer (UCL)
Eric Monnet (PSE) and Matthias Morys (York) “Stabilizing sovereign debt prices. A long run perspective, 1890-2020”
Discussant: Ugo Panizza (IHEID)
11:15 – 11:45 Coffee break
11:45 – 13:15 SESSION 4: Empire
Leigh Gardner (LSE) “All tax is local: fiscal decentralization and colonial institutions in British Africa”
Discussant: Grégoire Mallard (IHEID)
Rui Esteves (IHEID) and Coskun Tunçer (UCL) “’Dormant securities’: Imperial guarantees for colonial loans, 1842-1933”
Discussant: Matthieu Chavaz (BIS)
13:15 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 16:00 SESSION 5: The Infrastructure of Debt Markets
Marc Flandreau (Penn) and Geoffroy Legentilhomme (Zurich) “Death and Debt: Actuaries, Asset Values and the Rise of Financial Capitalism”
Discussant: Rui Esteves (IHEID)
Sasha Indarte (Penn), “Bad News Bankers: Underwriter Reputation and Contagion in Pre-1914 Sovereign Debt Markets”
Discussant: Eric Monnet (PSE)
16:00 – 16:15 Coffee break
16:15 – 17:45 SESSION 6: The Twentieth Century
Wilfried Kisling (WU) and Catherine Schenk (Oxford) “The Package Makes the Deal: Sovereign debt crisis and lending strategies of Lloyds Bank International in Latin America, 1975-1983”
Discussant: Edoardo Altamura (Lausanne, Manchester)
Nathan Sussman (IHEID) “The choice of bond currencies in the Eurobond Market 1965-1980"
Discussant: Matthias Morys (York)
16:00 – 16:15 CONCLUDING REMARKS
18:00: Cocktail dînatoire (La Terrasse)
Scientific committee: Rui Esteves (IHEID), Carsten Burhop (Bonn), Eric Monnet (PSE), Matthias Morys (York), Kirsten Wandschneider (Vienna)
