Between Sovereignty and Market: Monetary Innovations in History

"The value of money, and its ability to adequately fulfill its functions, depends as much on the authority of those who issue it as on the confidence of those who use it. Public and private initiative contribute, in different ways, to the functioning and transformations of monetary systems. This teaching initiative aims to illustrate how economic history, the history of economic thought and economics can contribute to studying the changes in the relationship between state sovereignty and the market that underlie the evolution of monetary institutions.
The initiative is divided into two half days. The first will be devoted to showing how the theoretical approach of great authors, such as John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich August von Hayek, can help understand the nature of money and credit and the elusive notion of liquidity, with particular reference to some recent innovations, such as unconventional monetary policies and commodity-anchored international currencies. The second will introduce the analytical tools needed to understand, from a historical perspective, the transformations taking place in the international monetary system, specifically the emergence of digital currencies, in the tension between persistent dollar hegemony and increasing fragmentation.
Both meetings will be divided into three parts. The first part will feature two or three seminar lectures of a more traditional bent lasting half an hour each; the second part will open with a panel discussion on the themes of the lectures, led by scholars in economics, economic history and the history of economic thought. This will be followed and concluded by a discussion with doctoral students and the audience.
The meetings are expected to be attended by Angela Ambrosino (University of Turin), Carlo D'Ippoliti (University of Rome, "La Sapienza"), Florencia Sember (University of Milan), Jacopo Maria Magurno (University of Milan), Jacopo Temperini (University of Rome, "La Sapienza"), Luca Fantacci (University of Milan), Lucio Gobbi (University of Trento), and Stefano Lucarelli (University of Bergamo). The initiative is sponsored by the PRIN 2022 project PNRR DEEP - Digital tEchnologies and monEtary Policies: the role of cryptocurrencies."