Michael Leger
- PhD Student
- Supervisor: Professor Jeremy Green
Contact
About
Thesis Title: Managing Money from the Periphery: Searching for Sovereignty over Money in the Decades of Development, 1940-1980
Biography:
Michael Leger is a PhD candidate in the department of Politics and International Studies. He studies the history of the rise and fall of the Bretton Woods monetary order. His research is on the relationship between monetary sovereignty and development, and his thesis explores the history of efforts of regional monetary multilateralism amongst developing countries, especially in Latin America and Africa. Michael’s PhD is funded by the Cambridge International Trust and Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
At Cambridge he has supervised on the History and Philosophy of Economics; the Politics of the International Economy; and Political Philosophy and the History of Political Thought since 1890. At King’s College London he has taught the Political Theory of Finance. He also co-wrote 8 chapters of textbook material for a University of London MSc Finance module, “The IMF and Economic Policy.”
While carrying out his research, Michael also completed a Warwick Business School Masters module, “Financial Markets and Financial Risk Management.” He has also been a board member at the Telluride Association since 2019, where he Chairs Telluride’s endowment investment committee.
Prior to Cambridge, Michael graduated at the top of his class in Political Science and History at McGill University in Montreal, and was awarded the RGCS prize for best undergraduate thesis, “Adam Smith and the Limited Joint Stock Company.” He previously attended Deep Springs College, which doubles as a liberal arts college and working cattle ranch.
Research
Michael’s thesis is titled: “Managing Money from the Periphery: The Search for Sovereignty over Money during the Decades of Development.” It covers debate on the rise of regional payments unions, the establishment of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, the issue of colonial debts, and the consequences of the rise of Eurodollars and floating exchange rates for development. Whereas multilateral agreements are often framed as involving sacrifices to state sovereignty, Michael’s research shows that many leading economists involved with the UN Regional Economic Commissions understood multilateral economic and monetary governance to be a necessary condition to support sovereign development. Michael has carried out archival research at UNESCO in Paris, the IMF and WB in D.C., the UN in Geneva and New York, the University of São Paulo, in addition to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America in Santiago. He was briefly a Junior Visiting Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. These research trips were funded by the Henry Kaufman Financial History Research Fellowship and POLIS.