Rachel Epstein

My most recent work focuses on Europe's long financial crisis, starting with the US economic meltdown in 2008, continuing through Eurozone instability of 2011 and 2012, and with ongoing reverberations in politics and economics in 2018. My most recent book, Banking on Markets (Oxford University Press 2017) explains why the crisis has been so long and severe through an examination of the very close political ties between many Eurozone governments and their domestically-owned or managed banks. Some of these findings were also published in a special issue of the Review of International Political Economy of which I was a guest editor in 2014. That volume was called "Assets or Liabilities?" referring to both the advantages and risks of political influence over and government enmeshment with finance.
My earlier research dealt with the role of international organizations in the post-communist transition of East Central Europe. I found that the EU, the IMF, the World Bank and NATO often had more difficulty securing compliance with their liberal policy prescriptions than was commonly understood or reported. I also found that eliciting compliance from target states depended on effective socialization rather than exclusively on the provision of incentives. That project culminated in my book "In Pursuit of Liberalism" (Johns Hopkins 2008) in addition to a number of research articles and special issues of journals.