History of Money and Financial Institutions

The course aims to trace the history of money and of financial institutions from the ancient world to the contemporary age. The course will analyze continuity and discontinuity that constituted the emergence of different monetary paradigms and that characterized the diverse credit systems with a focus on formal and informal financial institutions (banks, markets, international organizations, non-institutional operators) in the broader political, institutional and social context.

At the end of the course, students will be able to:
- have a sound knowledge of the main events, paradigms and interpretations relating the history of money and the financial institutions from antiquity to the contemporary age:
- identify and discuss critical turning points in the paths of evolution of monetary regimes and credit systems in a national and international context;
- understand and evaluate, through a comparative approach, the role of monetary policies and financial intermediaries in conditioning and determining evolution, characters and dynamics of the various economic systems;
- reflect on the role of national and international contexts in promoting or curbing growth and development, and in particular of the monetary and financial systems;
- carrying out a critical analysis of economic-financial choices and decision-making process in relation to path-dependencies, factor endowments and short- or long-term crises;
- to argue along the space-time axis the importance of institutions, innovations and markets for economic and financial development.