Dr Niccolo Valmori

This course is available on the MSc in Financial History. This course is not available as an outside option.

This course introduces students to problematics around the history of banking. It explores the rise of financial intermediaries over the centuries and how their role evolved from simple money changers to money creators via lending. Banks can sometimes fail; historical causes of these failures as well as macroeconomic consequences will be explored, going from the 19C through the Great Depression to the 21C. Countries have historically been aware of the central tension between the necessity to save a financial system from collapse and the imperative of no moral hazard created in the process. By looking at the evolution of crisis resolution and aspects of preventive regulation students will gain a deep understanding of the history of banking in the developed world.

20 hours of seminars in the WT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay and 1 presentation in the WT.

• Tooze, A. (2018). Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. London: Penguin Books.
• Aliber, R., & Kindleberger, Charles P. (2015). Manias, panics and crashes: A history of financial crises (Seventh ed.). Palgrave.
• Straumann, T. (2019). Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler. Oxford University Press.
• Galbraith, J. K. (2009) [1954]. The Great Crash 1929. Penguin.
• Bordo, M., Eichengreen, B., Klingebiel, D., & Martinez‐Peria, M. S. (2001). “Is the crisis problem growing more severe?”, Economic policy, 16(32), 52-82.

Essay (100%, 4000 words) in the WT Week 10.