Abstract

Post-crisis, central banks were encouraged to intervene against the cyclical build up of systemic risks in the financial system, a mandate which contravened previous conceptions of the state-economy boundary. This paper traces how central bank economists forged an analytical apparatus that could guide and legitimize such central bank interventions, detailing how their work involved forging new connections between actors within the boundary zone between the academic and the bureaucratic fields. Acting as ‘economists in the wild’, I show how these actors were able to establish ‘stylized facts’ about the boom-and-bust cycles of financial markets. Holding a foot both within the academic and the bureaucratic fields, such boundary walkers skilfully leveraged central bank resources to enrol allies in the field of academic economics to decisively shift the discursive representation of finance as cyclical, in turn legitimating ambitious central bank interventions into the functioning of the economy.

摘要

危机后，中央银行被鼓励干预金融体系中系统性风险的周期性积累，这一任务违背了先前关于国家经济边界的概念。本文追溯了中央银行经济学家如何打造一个可以指导中央银行干预并使此类干预合法化的分析工具，详细说明他们的工作如何涉及在学术和官僚领域之间的边界区域内的参与者之间建立新的联系。作为“野外经济学家”，我展示了这些参与者如何能够建立关于金融市场繁荣与萧条周期的“程式化事实”。在学术和官僚领域都站稳脚跟，