Teaching
Teaching
Graduate course in economics, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2025-2026.
Graduate seminar in economics, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2024.
This graduate block seminar is on the history of banking crises. Students will learn about the most important periods of bank distress from 1870 to today and understand empirical patterns surrounding banking crises in general. Using both a historical bird’s-eye view and highly influential recent empirical research, we will discuss theories, causes, consequences, policy responses, prevention policies and the international dimension of banking crises. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to contribute to ongoing research and dig into specific countries’ history of banking crises. The syllabus below provides an overview of a list of topics from which students can choose. There are two deliverables for this seminar: (i) a homework in the form of a term paper and (ii) a presentation to be held on seminar day.
Research project term paper: Some of the topics outlined below offer interested students the opportunity to contribute to ongoing academic research on the history of banking crises. These topics deal with the history of banking crises in a specific countries. Students that choose these topics, are provided with source material on the countries’ banking crises of the past and are tasked to write up short summaries outlining the macroeconomic background, causes, course of events, bank failures, policy responses and economic consequences of each crisis event. The material can be used for a book project and excellent students will be given co-authorship of the respective chapter.
Download syllabus
Advanced undergraduate economics, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2023-2025.
This undergraduate course is on money, banking and financial crises. It discusses the origin and theories of money, its relationship with credit and the innate instability of this relationship. Further, the course takes an accounting-based approach towards banking and explains fundamental concepts of bank stability using balance sheets. Different types of financial crises are discussed but a special focus lies on banking crises. We will learn what money is, what constitutes its ultimate value, why our banking systems are inherently unstable and why this also has a benefit. We delve into the history of banking crises to understand why crises occur and what can be done against them.
The course is split in two parts: It begins with a theoretical and historical section in which theories of money, credit and crises are discussed and are embedded in historical context. We will take a bird’s-eye view on the global history of banking crises in the past 150 years and track the development of institutions, regulation and policy responses. In a second empirical part, building of influential papers from the literature, we use historical data and empirical models to study the causes and consequences of banking crises, the impact of stock market crashes, and attempt to develop prediction models of recessions and banking crises with Stata.
Intermediate undergraduate economics, Freie Universität Berlin, 2020-2021.
This undergraduate course is about long-term economic growth, financial development,business cycles, and economic recessions and crises. It combines intermediate economic theory with a historical perspective, and compares the development of the North American countries of Canada, Mexico, and the United States over the past 150 years beginning in 1870. The goal of this seminar is to understand the determinants of prosperity, explain why economies grow, learn why economic growth fluctuates, and determine what it is that causes recessions and banking crises. We will also address the question of why Canada and the United States are nowadays considered developed countries whereas Mexico is described as an emerging economy. Where lie the institutional roots for this development? Further, we will look into the role of the countries’ different financial systems and assess how they played a role in enabling economic growth and the accumulation of productive capital, but also understand how they created severe disruptions in the form of banking crises. We will learn how Canada’s financial system became one of the most stable in the world, while the U.S. and Mexico repeatedly experienced financial turmoil and subsequent economic disaster.
Intermediate undergraduate economics, Freie Universität Berlin, 2018-2019 & 2020.
This undergraduate course is on (North) American financial history with a special focus on financial crises. We will discuss the monetary and financial developments in the United States from colonial times until today. While during most sessions we will discuss a specific period, there will also be theory blocks that will introduce us to the principal economics of money and banking, the theory of financial crises, and modern macroeconomic developments that emerged after the financial crisis of 2007-08. In this course, we will answer questions like: Why do financial crises occur? What do financial crises have in common, where do they differ? What is money, and why does it have value? How do banks work and what do central banks do? How did the banking system work in the past, and how did it evolve? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a gold standard? Why didn’t Canada have a banking crisis in over a hundred years (or did it)?
Undergraduate economics, Heidelberg University, 2013-2014.