History, Memory, and the Return of Financial Crises after Bretton Woods

Youssef Cassis, Professor, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute,Giuseppe Telesca, Tutor in Contemporary Economic History, University of Glasgow

Youssef Cassis is a Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence, and Director of the European Research Council funded project MERCATOR, 'The Memory of Financial Crises: Financial Actors and Global Risk'. His work focuses mainly on banking and financial history, as well as business history more generally. He is the author, among others, of Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres, 1780-2005 (Cambridge University Press, 2006, 2nd ed. 2010) and Crises and Opportunities: The Shaping of Modern Finance (Oxford University Press, 2011).

Giuseppe Telesca is a tutor in Contemporary Economic History at the University of Glasgow. From 2021 to 2024, he was a research fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence, where he worked on the European Research Council funded project MERCATOR, 'The Memory of Financial Crises: Financial Actors and Global Risk'. He has published on the memory of financial crises, the evolution of financial elites, the history of the Italian banking system, and the relationship between sport and business.

1. Introduction: History and memory of financial crises, Youssef Cassis and Giuseppe Telesca2. Forgotten and remembered nightmares Herstatt Risk in the global payments system, Catherine R. Schenk3. Narratives and memories of the International Debt Crisis from an Anglo-American and Mexican perspective, Bruno Pacchiotti and Giuseppe Telesca4. Episodic amnesia and selective memory, a literature overview of the 1982 crisis on the eve of its fortieth anniversary, Carlo Edoardo Altamura and Juan Flores Zendejas5. The spectre of history: How the fear of depression haunts financial crises, Johanna Gautier-Morin6. From a developmental to a market-oriented economy: Memory and the politics of the 'IMF' crisis in South Korea, Seung Woo Kim7. The end of Bretton Woods and the rise of over-the-counter derivatives: The mostly forgotten regulatory debates, Tobias Pforr8. Bankers in times of crisis: A prosopographic study of global financial elites, 1982-2008, Niccolò Valmori9. The problems of economics: Shifting crises in economics education after Bretton Woods, Alice Pearson10. Banking under the influence of history?: Remembering and forgetting at Danske Bank, Per H. Hansen11. The Global Financial Crisis of 2008: Memory, history, legacy, Youssef Cassis