Postgraduate Course: Political Economy of Financial Technology (CMSE11584)
Course Outline
| School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | States have historically played a critical role both in shaping financial markets and facilitating the development of new technologies throughout the economy. Until recently, however, these have been treated as separate policy and regulatory domains. However, the emergence of FinTech has blurred the boundaries between these domains. This course provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand the role that policymakers and regulators play in shaping technological innovations in finance, with a particular focus on the FinTech sector. |
| Course description |
Around the world, states and governments are actively attempting to influence ongoing developments in financial technology to achieve their own policy objectives. On the one hand, this reflects a continuation of a long-standing effort on the part of states to shape finance and financial markets, as well as states' efforts to promote technology and innovation throughout the economy. On the other hand, the merging of finance and technological innovation -what historically were treated as rather separate policy domains - is creating new opportunities and challenges for financial market participants.
This course provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand the evolving relationship between finance, technology, and the state, and the implications of these changes for FinTech practitioners. To this end, this course addresses the following two broad questions:
- Why have states and governments historically attempted to shape both the operation of financial markets and technological innovation throughout the economy, and what policy mechanisms have they used for each?
- What new policy and regulatory challenges is the merger of finance and technology (through FinTech) creating for regulators and policymakers, and how are they responding to these challenges?
This course, which is the second in a two-semester sequence of courses on FinTech policy and innovation, addresses these questions through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing on relevant historical and theoretical material from the fields of economics, political economy, law, sociology, and science and technology studies, which will be applied to shed light on emerging policy and regulatory issues in the area of FinTech.
- The relationship between finance, technological innovation, and the state
- The nuts and bolts of financial regulation
- How regulators and policymakers shape innovation in finance
- Technology and innovation policy for finance
- Globalization and the problem of international governance
- Emerging FinTech policy and regulatory challenges
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Exhibit a critical understanding of the relationship between states, financial markets, and technological innovation in the economy.
- Understand the various mechanisms through which government policy and regulation can shape the structure and operation of the financial system and the rate/direction of financial innovation.
- Understand the priorities and mandates of financial regulators and the complex trade-offs they face in fulfilling those mandates, particularly considering recent developments in FinTech.
- Make sophisticated use of relevant concepts and theories from the interdisciplinary academic literature on financial regulation and innovation to critically assess ongoing policy efforts to promote and shape FinTech innovation.
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Reading List
Quinn, Sarah. American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Pardo-Guerra, Juan Pablo. Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Fligstein, N. The Architecture of Markets. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Calomiris, Charles, and Stephen Haber. Fragile by Design. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Polillo, Simone. Conservatives versus Wildcats: A Sociology of Financial Conflict. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2013. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Taylor Spears
Tel: (0131 6)51 1057
Email: |
Course secretary | |
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