I am an economic historian and macroeconomist seeking to better understand how the evolution of finance, state intervention in credit markets, central banking and the international monetary system has shaped European economies since the 19th century. Understanding where we come from should be an essential contribution to current policy debates. 

My work aims at being interdisciplinary and showing how a historical perspective can inform and challenge economic thinking.  I share this goal with my colleagues of the François Simiand Center for social and economic history at the Paris School of Economics & EHESS. 

I have mainly conducted research in four areas:  (1) central bank credit policy, highlighting the historical and current role of policy instruments other than interest rates and how central bank actions interact with other state credit policies; (2) banking crises during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and in particular how bank deposits shifted to non-bank savings institutions and the economic consequences of the lack of policy response to this flight-to-safety and credit crunch ; (3) the evolution of the international monetary system since the end of the 19th century, and how governments and central banks try to cope with globalization through various means (monetary cooperation, central bank balance sheet adjustments, capital and credit controls, etc.); (4) the methodology of economic history, in particular the different forms of causality used in historical research.

This website features all my published work and also provides links to original historical datasets that I constructed with several colleagues. Do not hesitate to contact me if you are looking for additional data, or more information about data construction.

If you are interested in current monetary policy and looking for information on the proposal for a European Credit Council, you can start from here, here or here.  For an in-depth discussion of the Credit Council proposal and the democratic issues of central  bank policies today, see Balance of Power: Central Banks and the Fate of Democracies (Chicago University Press, 2024).

Before 2019, I worked for 6 years for the Eurosystem, as an economist at the Banque de France.  I was part of the teams in charge of producing macroeconomic forecasts (for France) and analyses (especially on housing investment and prices, then on euro area architecture).

 Contact: eric.monnet@psemail.eu