Growth at risk: Boundary walkers, stylized facts and the legitimacy of countercyclical interventions

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.