Lecture Series on Shadow Banking by Scholar in Residence Matthias Thiemann
Matthias Thiemann, Professor of European Public Policy at Sciences Po (Paris) and this year’s MPIfG Scholar in Residence, will give a three-part lecture series entitled “Technocrats, State Agency, and the Rise and Continued Expansion of the Shadow Banking System” during his three-month research stay in Cologne (April to June 2025). In his lectures, Thiemann will analyze how technocrats and government agencies have influenced the rise of shadow banking. His focus will be on developments in the US in the 1950s and 1960s and the subsequent struggle to integrate financial market stability into the US Federal Reserve’s monetary policy after the 2008 financial crisis. The series begins on April 29 with the lecture “The Conventional Wisdom Regarding the Rise of Shadow Banking and the Neglect of Financial Stability Concerns: Strengths and Weaknesses,” in which Thiemann critically examines the prevailing explanations for the emergence of shadow banking and the portrayal of a passive state. His lecture on May 6, “Foundations of the Rise of Shadow Banking in the US in the 1950s and 1960s: Acts of Commission and Acts of Omission by the Fed and the Treasury,” examines how the Federal Reserve actively laid the foundations for the subsequent shadow banking system through the repo market. The series concludes on May 13 with “Technocratic Myopia and the Time Inconsistency Problem Revisited: The Struggle Post-2008 to Integrate Financial Stability in Monetary Policy at the Fed.” In it, Thiemann explores why attempts to regulate shadow banking after the 2008 crisis failed and how central bankers avoided addressing financial imbalances despite being keenly aware of the risks.
