Steffen Murau
Biographic Data
| ID | 1522494 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steffen Murau |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steffen |
| FAMILY NAME | Murau |
| SIGNATURE | MURAU S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3460-0026 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 99 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
State Finance Beyond the Core Budget: Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies in Germany’s Fiscal Ecosystem
The state is often perceived as a unitary fiscal actor, operating through a core budget managed by the treasury. However, recent scholarship increasingly emphasizes the role of off-balance-sheet fiscal agencies (OBFAs)—entities distinct from the treasury but tasked with similar fiscal activities, often backed by implicit or explicit state guarantees. This creates a complex and historically contingent “fiscal ecosystem,” shaped by political, econo…
Schrödinger’s off-balance-sheet fiscal agency: The Recovery and Resilience Facility and the limits to incremental fiscal integration in Europe
Rethinking currency internationalisation: Offshore money creation and the EU’s monetary governance
Towards a public sustainable finance paradigm for the green transition
Sustainable finance is often discussed as a solution to the climate crisis, but its impacts are limited and its discourse focuses on mobilising private investments through public de-risking, without considering direct government action. We argue that this is due to an implicit reference to mainstream economic theory assuming that an active state leads to time inconsistency problems and crowding-out effects. However, these assumptions have been su…
Monetary architecture and the Green Transition
How to finance the Green Transition toward net-zero carbon emissions remains an open question. The literature either operates within a market-failure paradigm that calls for carbon taxes or cap-and-trade to help markets correct themselves, or via war finance analogies that offer a "triad" of state intervention possibilities: taxation, treasury borrowing, and central bank money creation. These frameworks often lack a thorough conceptualization of …
Shadow Money in the History of Monetary Thought
Published online: 02 November 2023
Forging monetary unification through novation: The Target system and the politics of central banking in Europe
When the European Monetary Union became effective in January 1999, the accounting treatment for claims and obligations which the Eurosystem’s National Central Banks (NCBs) incur against each other in the ‘Trans-European Automated Real-Time Gross Express Transfer’ (TARGET) system remained unspecified. Only later in 1999, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided that these claims and obligations should be shifted to the ECB’…
Rethinking Monetary Sovereignty: The Global Credit Money System and the State
We propose a new conception of monetary sovereignty that acknowledges the reality of today’s global credit money system. Today, the concept is predominantly used to denote states that issue and regulate their own currency. We reject that Westphalian understanding of monetary sovereignty. Instead, we propose a conception of effective monetary sovereignty that focuses on what states are actually able to do in the era of financial globalization. The…
The Eurozone’s Evolving Fiscal Ecosystem: Mitigating Fiscal Discipline by Governing Through Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies
The original Maastricht regime designed the Eurozone’s fiscal segment in a way that sought to keep member states’ treasury budgets balanced by disciplining them through market forces, reducing the overall volume of public indebtedness, prohibiting monetary financing, and avoiding that Eurozone treasuries bail each other out. In this article, we analyse how these ‘neoliberal’ rules for fiscal governance have been gradually superseded by an alterna…
Financial globalization as positive integration: Monetary technocrats and the Eurodollar market in the 1970s
International political economy (IPE) has explained financial globalization as the result of states deciding to open up and liberalize domestic financial systems. Complementing this ‘negative integration’ view, we present a theory of financial globalization during the 1970s that emphasizes the importance of ‘positive integration.’ Credit money systems are characterized by public-private infrastructural entanglements, the management of which requi…
What is money in a critical macro-finance framework
This forum contribution explains how analyzing the creation, distribution, and destruction of contemporary credit money is placed centre stage in the emerging field of critical macro-finance. This approach not only involves traditional forms of money but also 'shadow money': private credit instruments which are not regulated as money from a legal standpoint, but in many respects are functionally equivalent to 'established' forms of money. To conn…
Shadow money and the public money supply: The impact of the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the monetary system
This article explores the effects of the political reactions to the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the monetary system. It chimes in with the view that shadow banks create ‘shadow money’, i.e. private substitutes for bank deposits. The article analyses how the three main forms of shadow money – money market fund shares, overnight repurchase agreements and asset-backed commercial papers – were affected by the short-term government intervention and …
EU, US and Asean Actorness in G20 Financial Policy‐Making: Bridging the EU Studies–New Regionalism Divide
This article compares the European Union's (EU) actorness in foreign financial policy to that of the US and ASEAN. It thus contributes to the dialogue between EU studies and the New Regionalism by putting it into practice through comparative research. It argues that a process‐oriented interpretation of the actorness concept can be used to compare the EU to both nation‐states and international organizations at the same time. This makes it possible…
Financial globalization as positive integration: Monetary technocrats and the Eurodollar market in the 1970s
International political economy (IPE) has explained financial globalization as the result of states deciding to open up and liberalize domestic financial systems. Complementing this ‘negative integration’ view, we present a theory of financial globalization during the 1970s that emphasizes the importance of ‘positive integration.’ Credit money systems are characterized by public-private infrastructural entanglements, the management of which requi…
Shadow money and the public money supply: The impact of the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the monetary system
This article explores the effects of the political reactions to the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the monetary system. It chimes in with the view that shadow banks create ‘shadow money’, i.e. private substitutes for bank deposits. The article analyses how the three main forms of shadow money – money market fund shares, overnight repurchase agreements and asset-backed commercial papers – were affected by the short-term government intervention and …
Rethinking Monetary Sovereignty: The Global Credit Money System and the State
We propose a new conception of monetary sovereignty that acknowledges the reality of today’s global credit money system. Today, the concept is predominantly used to denote states that issue and regulate their own currency. We reject that Westphalian understanding of monetary sovereignty. Instead, we propose a conception of effective monetary sovereignty that focuses on what states are actually able to do in the era of financial globalization. The…
What is money in a critical macro-finance framework
This forum contribution explains how analyzing the creation, distribution, and destruction of contemporary credit money is placed centre stage in the emerging field of critical macro-finance. This approach not only involves traditional forms of money but also 'shadow money': private credit instruments which are not regulated as money from a legal standpoint, but in many respects are functionally equivalent to 'established' forms of money. To conn…
The Eurozone’s Evolving Fiscal Ecosystem: Mitigating Fiscal Discipline by Governing Through Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies
The original Maastricht regime designed the Eurozone’s fiscal segment in a way that sought to keep member states’ treasury budgets balanced by disciplining them through market forces, reducing the overall volume of public indebtedness, prohibiting monetary financing, and avoiding that Eurozone treasuries bail each other out. In this article, we analyse how these ‘neoliberal’ rules for fiscal governance have been gradually superseded by an alterna…
Towards a public sustainable finance paradigm for the green transition
Sustainable finance is often discussed as a solution to the climate crisis, but its impacts are limited and its discourse focuses on mobilising private investments through public de-risking, without considering direct government action. We argue that this is due to an implicit reference to mainstream economic theory assuming that an active state leads to time inconsistency problems and crowding-out effects. However, these assumptions have been su…
EU, US and Asean Actorness in G20 Financial Policy‐Making: Bridging the EU Studies–New Regionalism Divide
This article compares the European Union's (EU) actorness in foreign financial policy to that of the US and ASEAN. It thus contributes to the dialogue between EU studies and the New Regionalism by putting it into practice through comparative research. It argues that a process‐oriented interpretation of the actorness concept can be used to compare the EU to both nation‐states and international organizations at the same time. This makes it possible…
Monetary architecture and the Green Transition
How to finance the Green Transition toward net-zero carbon emissions remains an open question. The literature either operates within a market-failure paradigm that calls for carbon taxes or cap-and-trade to help markets correct themselves, or via war finance analogies that offer a "triad" of state intervention possibilities: taxation, treasury borrowing, and central bank money creation. These frameworks often lack a thorough conceptualization of …
Forging monetary unification through novation: The Target system and the politics of central banking in Europe
When the European Monetary Union became effective in January 1999, the accounting treatment for claims and obligations which the Eurosystem’s National Central Banks (NCBs) incur against each other in the ‘Trans-European Automated Real-Time Gross Express Transfer’ (TARGET) system remained unspecified. Only later in 1999, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided that these claims and obligations should be shifted to the ECB’…
Schrödinger’s off-balance-sheet fiscal agency: The Recovery and Resilience Facility and the limits to incremental fiscal integration in Europe
Shadow Money in the History of Monetary Thought
Published online: 02 November 2023
EU, US and Asean Actorness in G20 Financial Policy‐Making: Bridging the EU Studies–New Regionalism Divide
This article compares the European Union's (EU) actorness in foreign financial policy to that of the US and ASEAN. It thus contributes to the dialogue between EU studies and the New Regionalism by putting it into practice through comparative research. It argues that a process‐oriented interpretation of the actorness concept can be used to compare the EU to both nation‐states and international organizations at the same time. This makes it possible…
Shadow money and the public money supply: The impact of the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the monetary system
This article explores the effects of the political reactions to the 2007–2009 financial crisis on the monetary system. It chimes in with the view that shadow banks create ‘shadow money’, i.e. private substitutes for bank deposits. The article analyses how the three main forms of shadow money – money market fund shares, overnight repurchase agreements and asset-backed commercial papers – were affected by the short-term government intervention and …
Financial globalization as positive integration: Monetary technocrats and the Eurodollar market in the 1970s
International political economy (IPE) has explained financial globalization as the result of states deciding to open up and liberalize domestic financial systems. Complementing this ‘negative integration’ view, we present a theory of financial globalization during the 1970s that emphasizes the importance of ‘positive integration.’ Credit money systems are characterized by public-private infrastructural entanglements, the management of which requi…
What is money in a critical macro-finance framework
This forum contribution explains how analyzing the creation, distribution, and destruction of contemporary credit money is placed centre stage in the emerging field of critical macro-finance. This approach not only involves traditional forms of money but also 'shadow money': private credit instruments which are not regulated as money from a legal standpoint, but in many respects are functionally equivalent to 'established' forms of money. To conn…
The Eurozone’s Evolving Fiscal Ecosystem: Mitigating Fiscal Discipline by Governing Through Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies
The original Maastricht regime designed the Eurozone’s fiscal segment in a way that sought to keep member states’ treasury budgets balanced by disciplining them through market forces, reducing the overall volume of public indebtedness, prohibiting monetary financing, and avoiding that Eurozone treasuries bail each other out. In this article, we analyse how these ‘neoliberal’ rules for fiscal governance have been gradually superseded by an alterna…
Shadow Money in the History of Monetary Thought
Published online: 02 November 2023
Forging monetary unification through novation: The Target system and the politics of central banking in Europe
When the European Monetary Union became effective in January 1999, the accounting treatment for claims and obligations which the Eurosystem’s National Central Banks (NCBs) incur against each other in the ‘Trans-European Automated Real-Time Gross Express Transfer’ (TARGET) system remained unspecified. Only later in 1999, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided that these claims and obligations should be shifted to the ECB’…
Rethinking Monetary Sovereignty: The Global Credit Money System and the State
We propose a new conception of monetary sovereignty that acknowledges the reality of today’s global credit money system. Today, the concept is predominantly used to denote states that issue and regulate their own currency. We reject that Westphalian understanding of monetary sovereignty. Instead, we propose a conception of effective monetary sovereignty that focuses on what states are actually able to do in the era of financial globalization. The…
Towards a public sustainable finance paradigm for the green transition
Sustainable finance is often discussed as a solution to the climate crisis, but its impacts are limited and its discourse focuses on mobilising private investments through public de-risking, without considering direct government action. We argue that this is due to an implicit reference to mainstream economic theory assuming that an active state leads to time inconsistency problems and crowding-out effects. However, these assumptions have been su…
Monetary architecture and the Green Transition
How to finance the Green Transition toward net-zero carbon emissions remains an open question. The literature either operates within a market-failure paradigm that calls for carbon taxes or cap-and-trade to help markets correct themselves, or via war finance analogies that offer a "triad" of state intervention possibilities: taxation, treasury borrowing, and central bank money creation. These frameworks often lack a thorough conceptualization of …
Rethinking currency internationalisation: Offshore money creation and the EU’s monetary governance
State Finance Beyond the Core Budget: Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies in Germany’s Fiscal Ecosystem
The state is often perceived as a unitary fiscal actor, operating through a core budget managed by the treasury. However, recent scholarship increasingly emphasizes the role of off-balance-sheet fiscal agencies (OBFAs)—entities distinct from the treasury but tasked with similar fiscal activities, often backed by implicit or explicit state guarantees. This creates a complex and historically contingent “fiscal ecosystem,” shaped by political, econo…
Schrödinger’s off-balance-sheet fiscal agency: The Recovery and Resilience Facility and the limits to incremental fiscal integration in Europe
Economics (11 works) · Finance (9 works) · Monetary economics (7 works) · Monetary policy (6 works) · Economic Theory and Policy (5 works) · Financial system (5 works) · Global Financial Crisis and Policies (5 works) · Global Financial Regulation and Crises (5 works) · Balance sheet (4 works) · Business (4 works)