Professor for European Public Policy, Sciences Po Paris
I am a sociologist, with close affinities to political economy. On the one hand, I am analyzing the attempts of financial regulators in Europe and the US to control the risk taking behavior of agents in the financial industry, an attempt complicated by the fact that these agents gain from evading such control. On the other hand, I am investigating post-crisis regulatory changes in the US asking why certain ideas that gained prominence post-crisis are translated into policy tools, while others are eschewed by policy makers. Methodologically, I am drawing on expert interviews and document analysis, but also citation network analysis and topic modeling.
Publications
Works in progress
Contact
Taming the Cycles of Finance? Central Banks and the Macro-prudential Shift in Financial Regulation,
Cambridge University Press, 2024
Matthias Thiemann
Taming the Cycles of Finance traces the post-crisis rise of macroprudential regulation and argues that, despite its original aims, it typically supports finance in times of crisis but fails to curb it in times of booms. Investigating how different macroprudential frameworks developed in the UK, the USA and the Eurozone, the book explains how central bank economists went about building early warning systems to identify fragilities in the financial system. It then shows how administrative and political constraints limited the effects of this shift, as central banks were wary of intervening in a discretionary manner and policymakers were opposed to measures to limit credit growth.
Book review
Scientific central banking and the tragedy of financial Keynesianism – Matthias Thiemann, Taming the Cycles of Finance? Central Banks and the Macroprudential Shift in Financial Regulation, Cambridge University Press, 2024.
