DAVID MARTIN

My dissertation seeks to explain the political origins of the United States’ public-private partnership in monetary policy. My main research questions are as follows: (1) why is money creation authority shared between the state and the private sector in the United States? (2) Why do periods of fiscal and monetary reform produce systems marked by instability and crisis? I adopt a multi-method approach with both archival research as well as quantitative analyses of roll-call votes.

In three case studies of changes in monetary policy in US history--1861-1879, 1929-1940 and 1941-1960--I outline the theory of “Elite Entanglement.” In short, Elite Entanglement describes the process through which the state and the financial sector become intertwined through debt, often to the detriment of democratic publics and financial stability. Similar to other scholars, I find that, through a process of lobbying and regulatory arbitrage by financial interests, public preferences for more democratic fiscal and monetary policy are taken off the agenda. Yet the popular narrative that organized finance always wins is too simplistic. Instead of financial instability solely being a story of risky private innovation and regulatory arbitrage followed by a crash and public bailout, it is also a story of public innovation and private accommodation. 

Throughout US history, in order to ensure cheap federal finance, the state has created new forms of money, which it has outsourced to private actors. These interventions frequently involved deals in which rents (profits) were provided to new financial intermediaries that were willing to support state growth. While financial sector lobbying does play a role in curtailing state growth in the first place, private financial interests are not sufficient to explain the new forms of private money, as the state’s interests are often independent of private interests. Lastly, I detail how there is minimal accountability or transparency in this process of “entanglement” between state managers and financial elites, which poses problems for democratic accountability over monetary and banking institutions.   

 Please see the "Research" tab for the abstract of chapter 5 of my dissertation which serves as my job market paper.

At Rutgers, I also work as a Research Associate at the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling. Please see the "Public Opinion + Data Science" tab above for more details.

I have also designed and taught Intro to American Politics, American Political Economy, and Money and Modern America. I'm a Philly sports fan, and enjoy hiking and soccer.