Uses of the Past in International Economic Relations (UPIER) Project Presentation

Presentation of the project | Work packages | UPIER’s structure | UPIER’s funding

— Presentation of the project

One of the many exceptional aspects of the global financial crisis of 2008 was the prominence policy-makers and commentators gave to the importance of history in helping to determine responses to the crisis.  Comparisons with the great depression of the 1930s feature prominently  in commentaries on the depth and spread of the global financial crisis and reveal the extent to which policy-makers seek to ‘learn’ from the past (Calomiris and Haber 2014; Eichengreen 2015).  But how relevant is the past as a guide to the present, or even the future, and how is it used when policymakers, bankers and the public are faced with difficult economic challenges?

The main objective of UPIER is to build an understanding of how both policy-makers and market actors use the past as a foundation for their decisions, how they create and discriminate among different interpretations of the past to fit their preconceptions and how they are conditioned by the experiences of their predecessors.  Through careful archival research and case studies we also seek to trace the intergenerational transfer of interpretations of the past and how the past is used within a range of institutions across Europe.  The project will therefore break new ground for our understanding of how the past is used in the context of international economic relations, particularly at times of crisis. We also hope to refresh the research agenda in economic history in the European Research Area to engage with the uses of the past.  The methodology of the project is primarily historical interpretation of archival evidence.   We do not seek to explain economic phenomena, but rather to explore the historical question of how policy-makers and bankers created and used interpretations of the past.

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— Four interconnected work packages

  1. Great Depression and conditionality (PI O’Sullivan)
  • How are different versions of the past used by policymakers?
  • How do versions of the past become useful?
  • How is the past used to construct institutions?

2. Sovereign debt (PI Schenk)

  • Why do repeated defaulters still get access to loans?
  • How do investors use the past to inform their decisions?
  • Why are investors’ memories so short?

3. Regulatory traditions (PI Larsson)

  • How have regulators used the past to develop models of regulation?
  • How and what do they learn from each other?

4. History and the PIGS (PI Battilossi)

  • How have interpretations of the past been used in the public discourse about the recent crisis in Southern European Economies?

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— UPIER’s structure

The UPIER project is a collaboration between:


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— UPIER’s funding

The UPIER project is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme 3 Uses of the Past which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, BMBF via DLR-PT, CAS, CNR, DASTI, ETAg, FWF, F.R.S. – FNRS, FWO, FCT, FNR, HAZU, IRC, LMT, MIZS, MINECO, NWO, NCN, RANNÍS, RCN, SNF, VIAA and The European Commission through Horizon 2020.


The UPIER project has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grantagreement No 649307.

 

 

More information is available on the UPIER project website.

 

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