Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises

The chapters in this book reflect on people's relationships with past financial crises - from public opinion to business leaders and policy makers. In connection with financial crises, Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises addresses three fundamental questions: first, are financial crises remembered, and if so how? Second, have lessons been drawn from past financial crises? And third, have past experiences been used in order to make practical decisions when confronted with a new crisis? These questions are of course related, yet they have been approached from different historical perspectives, using methodologies borrowed from different academic disciplines. One of the objectives of this book is to explore how these approaches can complement each other in order to better understand the relationships between remembering and learning from financial crises and how the past is used by financial institutions. It thus recognises financial crisis as a recurring phenomenon and addresses the impact that this has in a range of public and policy contexts.

Youssef Cassis, Research Professor, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence,Catherine R. Schenk, Professor of Economic and Social History, University of Oxford

Youssef Cassis is Research Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, and Principal Investigator of the ERC funded research project on 'The Memory of Financial Crises: Financial Actors and Global Risk'. From 2011 to 2019, he was Professor of Economic History at the European University Institute. His work mainly focuses on banking and financial history, as well as business history more generally. His most recent books include Private Banking in Europe: Rise, Retreat, and Resurgence (OUP, 2015). He has also recently co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Banking and Financial History (OUP, 2016, with Richard Grossman and Catherine Schenk). He was a long serving member of the Academic Advisory Council of the European Association for Banking and Financial History and past President (2005-2007) of the European Business History Association (EBHA).

Catherine Schenk is Professor of Economic and Social History at University of Oxford. After completing her undergraduate and Masters degrees at University of Toronto in Economics, International Relations, and Chinese Studies, she completed her PhD at the London School of Economics. Since then she has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Royal Holloway, University of London, and University of Glasgow. She has also been visiting professor at Nankai University, China, and Hong Kong University and she has spent time as a visiting researcher at the International Monetary Fund and at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. She was 2019 Senior Lamfalussy Fellow at the Bank for International Settlements. She is Associate Fellow in international economics at Chatham House.

1. Memories and Uses of the Past, Youssef Cassis and Catherine Schenk
2. The Memory of Financial Crises: The Great Depression and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, Youssef Cassis and Anna Knaps
3. 'Unfortunately we are bankrupt': The Greek Bankruptcy Crisis of 1893 and its Remembrance in the World Economic Crisis 2010-11, Korinna Sch?nh?rl
4. Myths and Memory: The Crisis of the Pound and the Political Use of the Memory of 1931 in the United Kingdom, Giuseppe Telesca
5. The Past as Practice or Parable: Anticipating Financial Crisis in the 1960s and 1980s, Catherine Schenk
6. To Remember or Forget? Financial Crises and Regulatory Regimes in Sweden, Mats Larsson and Kristina Lilja
7. Making Capitalism Respectable after Financial Crisis: The Language of German and American Corporate Governance, 1873-1914, Jeffrey Fear and Christopher Kobrak
8. The 1987 Stock Exchange Crash: a Crisis Denied?, Laure Quennou?lle-Corre
9. British banks and their Aesop's fables: organizational memories of the governance and management of financial crisis, Victoria Barnes and Lucy Newton