Time: 10:00am - 12:00pm Venue: Room 1.2, CCLS, 67-69 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3JB
While the globalisation of private capital markets has generated important welfare gains, it has also been responsible for episodes of financial instability, often with devastating consequences. Through interactive participation, the Course will analyse the underlying causes of international financial crises and assess the efforts of policy makers to both mitigate their impact and prevent their recurrence. The Course will be interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on the legal, financial and economic dimensions of these crises and the relevant policy responses. Key lessons will be distilled from an in-depth analysis of the most important episodes, including the Latin American Debt Crisis, the Asian Financial Crisis, Argentina’s default in 2001 and the crises precipitated by the Great Recession of 2008, including the Eurozone Crisis.
The Course will analyse both the common patterns of the previous international financial crises and the extent to which they have differed. In that context, the Course will investigate how the dynamics of these crises have been driven both by the evolution of credit markets (including the transition from bank lending to bond issuance) and changes in the underlying legal framework that supports these markets. The Course will analyse the competing considerations faced by policy makers as they seek to mitigate the impact of a crisis – often with large-scale financial assistance – without increasing the risk of future crises through the creation of excessive moral hazard. In that context, the Course will review in some detail the role played by the International Monetary Fund in managing these crises. The goal for the classes is to be interactive. Student participation based on the assigned readings is key.
