📝 New publication 📝

We have now published our study on the Transformation of the Eurozone Architecture, co-authored with Alex Goghie, Matteo Giordano, and @rikereimer.bsky.social

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

You can access our working paper series, YouTube channel, and data repository to see what we’ve been working on in our first project period

We’ll be sharing more insights from our research about the political economy of financing large-scale transformations over the next few weeks 🔜

We apply these concepts on historical large-scale transformations in the 20th century, focusing on war and reconstruction finance

Building on these insights from the first half of the project, we will focus for the next three years on the biggest challenge of our times: the Green Transition 🌱

On the website, you can explore the key concepts we apply in our research 🔑

We analyse the global economy as a hierarchically ordered web of interlocking balance sheets 🌐

We’ve developed concepts like off-balance-sheet fiscal agencies (OBFAs) which are part of our Monetary Architecture framework

📣 News from the OBFA-TRANSFORM project 📣

Our Emmy Noether research group is fast approaching its halfway point and we’ve recently received confirmation of funding from @dfg.de for the second project period from 2026 to 2029 🎊

That's why we are launching our new website at obfa-transform.eu

We present our map of 'off-balance-sheet fiscal agencies' (OBFAs) in Germany, looking at their legal status, revenue schemes, and ways to issue debt.

👉 the state is not a single financial entity even though models and discourses tend to claim that. Instead, the state is a complex financial being...

thus helps fund sovereign debt on NCB balance sheets without writing it down explicitly. The funding is off-balance-sheet, just a loan appears on-NCB-balance-sheet (cf Bundesbank example👇)

States fully depend on this off-balance-sheet central bank funding for their structural sovereign debt burden.

🅱️ the lender gets the security without touching its actual balance sheet; instead, it is on the lender's 'off-balance-sheet balance sheet'. This is combined with the security being 'due' (as liability)

This 2nd operation can be combined with ↕️ vertical (👇) or ↔️ horizontal mechanism in 1st operation

↔️ Horizontal repos:

Two counterparties on the same hierarchical level (here: banks) enter into a repo operation. They create the same repo IOUs as in vertical repos but there is no creation of new money (here: reserves) going on. Instead, pre-existing reserves are lent out

↕️ Vertical repos:

The hierarchically lower institution (‘repo borrower’) creates the repo as a liability that can be held as an asset on the balance sheet of the institution that is hierarchically higher (‘repo lender’)

This operation creates repo instruments and new money (here: reserves)

🚨 New open access article 🚨

Out now in Journal of Financial Regulation with Alex Goghie and Matteo Giordano

'Encumbered Security? Vertical and Horizontal Repos in the Euro Area and Their Inherent Ambiguity'

academic.oup.com/jfr/advance-...

🚨 Call for Papers

We are organizing a special session at this year's #EAEPE conference in Athens (24-26 September 2025) on the Political Economy of the Eurozone Crisis

Details to be found here: tinyurl.com/2ffbeyj2

Apply until 1 March with a 300-750 word abstract at eaepe.org/abstract-sub...