What is a financial crisis?

17-18 June 2024, Vera Anstey Room, Old Building, LSE

The recent collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and the takeover of banking giant Credit Suisse by UBS, ‘orchestrated’ by the Swiss financial and monetary authorities, have again raised the spectre of financial crises. But should these events be considered as a financial crisis, the prelude of a financial crisis, or a financial turbulence? What do they have in common with such shocks as the Baring Crisis of 1890, the crisis of Crédit Lyonnais in 1994, or the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998? And how do we compare the failure of a large financial institutions with crises threatening the collapse of the financial system, such as the Great Depression, the International Debt Crisis of 1982, or the Global Financial Crisis of 2008?  

There are different types of financial crisis (banking crises, stock market crises, currency crises, sovereign defaults) each with different degrees of intensity. But how should we judge and measure this intensity? ‘Objectively’, through quantitative measures designed by economists? Or ‘subjectively’, through the ways financial crises have been experienced by financial actors and remembered and narrated by later generations? Can the two approaches be combined? Which one is more likely to determine the behaviour of financial actors faced with growing financial instability and the risk of a financial crisis?  

By asking the question ‘what is a financial crisis?’, this conference aims to open a discussion on the various definitions, understandings, analyses, narratives, and memories of financial crises from various disciplinary viewpoints (history, economics, politics, sociology, law) as well as professional perspectives (academics, regulators, financial actors, politicians, journalists).  

The conference will take a long-term historical perspective, from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. It will consider both case studies and more general pieces, either concerned with financial crises taking place in advanced or emerging economies or with the interactions between financial shocks in emerging economies and their effects in advanced economies. 

This conference is organised within the framework of the ERC funded project The Memory of Financial Crises: Financial Actors and Global Risk - MERCATOR, directed by Professor Youssef Cassis.

UPDATE: 24th June 2024:  Our keynote speaker, Gillian Tett, was published in the Financial Times with her thoughts on the conference.  You can read more here  (LSE staff and students have free access through the library, but others will need to pay for a subscription)

Conference organisers

Scientific committee: Professor Youssef Cassis (LSE, Robert Schuman Center, EUI), Professor Olivier Accominotti (LSE), Dr Sabine Schneider (LSE), Dr Niccolò Valmori (LSE, Robert Schuman Center, EUI).

Organising committee: Tracy Keefe (t.j.keefe@lse.ac.uk) and Kamilah Hassan (k.hassan4@lse.ac.uk).

There are likely to be limited spaces that we can offer to non-presenters.  If you would like to be considered, please complete this form.

The project leading to this application has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 884910).

sponsor logos