Transforming central banking in the ecological crisis: intersecting perspectives from political economy and accounting

This event brings together scholars to discuss political economy and accounting perspectives on the challenges for transforming central banking in the ecological crisis.

Since 2009, extraordinary central bank interventions following the global financial crisis and pandemic shocks have exposed the political role of these institutions and provided alternative approaches a more public hearing. Aspects of climate policy have also become formalised on central banks’ agendas. Yet the institutions themselves appear caught in limbo, between their core historic mandates and their potential role as impactful ecological agents. Transnational networks for greening finance, both public and private, are fragmenting. The question remains as to how central banks would move from their narrow but growing directives to become a key infrastructural element to a green state, and what this new infrastructure would look like. 

The workshop also considers the intersections of political economy and accounting within this broad challenge, reflecting on potential complementarities, gaps and conflicts within disciplinary approaches. In effect, if there is a historical debate about the various roles that central banks could/should play in relation to regulating or shaping the economy in political economy, for instance between Keynesian and neoclassical economists, accounting scholars rarely engage with macro-economic aspects. One explanation could be that accounting is primarily understood as a tool of economization of the enterprise and of organisation and hence bound within the micro-economic, making accounting a relevant approach to study the deployment of neoliberalism at that level. This workshop offers a specific opportunity for scholars to reflect about the role that accounting as a practice, a discourse, and an academic discipline could play in other political economic paradigms in relation to grand challenges such as climate change.

Participants are drawn from a variety of backgrounds – political economy, economics, law, accounting, economic sociology – to discuss these challenges across three panels. The panels will gather the following experts:

• John Morris (University of Nottingham)

• Monica DiLeo (LSE/Hertie)

• Agnieszka Smolenska (LSE Grantham)

• Maria Nikolaidi (University of Greenwich)

• Christine Cooper (University of Edinburgh)

• Jonathan Tweedie (University of Manchester)

We are keen to encourage dialogue around the intersections of institutional transformation, regulatory and policy change, macrofinance and the politics of accounting, the quantification and the economisation of a planned economy and alternative forms of accounting model to foster public investment. 

Questions for consideration include:

• What are the tools that central banks already have at their disposal, and what tools still need to be developed?

• What are the challenges in terms of regulation, quantification and economisation of the spaces created by these new tools?

• What are the political obstacles to transforming central banks into an effective infrastructure of the green state?

• What can we learn from progress, or lack of it, around the world for transforming central banking?

• How might we think about central banking transformation in accounting terms and why hasn’t this happened within the accounting discipline?

• Are there productive connections between political economy or macrofinancial perspectives and critical accounting approaches?

  Indicative timing: