Sociological perspectives on the bank failures of 2023.
Warren Center online event, 19 April 2023, 11.00–12.00 ET.
The Charles Warren Center at Harvard and Just Money are hosting an online panel on the bank failures of 2023 from a sociological perspective:
Following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, as well as the forced acquisition of Credit Suisse, banks are back in the headlines. This panel considers recent events in light of the flowering of sociological research since the financial crisis of 2008. Sociologists have mapped the networks that tie financial actors together, investigated the institutional structures of banks and regulatory agencies, and studied the materiality of trading floors. Fifteen years after Lehman Brothers, the financial system has come under stress yet again, raising a number of theoretical and policy questions. How do sociological perspectives help illuminate the current situation? What are similarities with and differences to earlier crises? For instance, how have the network dynamics of bank runs changed with the rise of venture capital investors? How does organizational culture at banks help explain recent events, e.g., the downfall of Credit Suisse? This panel brings together six sociologists for an early attempt at making sense of the most recent crisis.
Participants:
- Daniel Beunza (City, University of London)
- Pierre Christian-Fink (Harvard University)
- Neil Fligstein (University of California, Berkeley)
- Kim Pernell (University of Texas, Austin)
- Gillian Tett (Financial Times)
- Matthias Thiemann (Sciences Po, Paris)
- Cornelia Woll (Hertie School of Governance, Berlin)
The event is free via zoom link here. More information available on the event page.