Short profile

Steffen is a political economist specializing in international money and finance. He currently serves as Co-chairperson at the Global Climate Forum (GCF), where he also leads the Macro-Financial Governance research group. He is the Principal Investigator of the Emmy Noether research project OBFA-TRANSFORM, in which he applies the monetary architecture framework to the financing of the Green Transition. Additionally, Steffen teaches political economy at the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin) and is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Previously, Steffen held postdoctoral affiliations at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, the City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC) at City, University of London, and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam. He holds a PhD in International Political Economy from City, University of London (2017), a Magister Artium in Political Science, Philosophy, and International Law from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München (2012), and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from LMU München (2011).

Research interests

Monetary theory; monetary history; the international monetary system; the European Monetary Union; financing the Green Transition

Selected publications

Laudage Rexroth, Gregor, Armin Haas, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Steffen Murau (2026), State Finance Beyond the Core Budget: Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies in Germany’s Fiscal Ecosystem, Journal of Law and Political Economy

Reimer, Friederike, Andrei Guter-Sandu, Armin Haas, and Steffen Murau (2026), Schrödinger’s Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agency: The Recovery and Resilience Facility and the Limits to Incremental Fiscal Integration in Europe, Journal of European Integration

van ‘t Klooster, Jens and Steffen Murau (2025), Rethinking Currency Internationalisation. Offshore Money Creation and the EU’s Monetary Governance, Journal of European Public Policy, online first.

Murau, Steffen, Alexandru-Stefan Goghie, and Matteo Giordano (2025), Encumbered Security? Vertical and Horizontal Repos in the Euro Area and Their Inherent Ambiguity, Journal of Financial Regulation, 11 (2), pp. 166-214.

Murau, Steffen and Tobias Pforr (2025), Shadow Money in the History of Monetary Thought, Review of Political Economy, 37 (4), pp. 1664-1680.

Guter-Sandu, Andrei, Armin Haas, and Steffen Murau (2024), Green Macro-Financial Governance in the European Monetary Architecture. Assessing the Capacity to Finance the Net-Zero Transition, Competition and Change, online first.

Murau, Steffen, Armin Haas, and Andrei Guter-Sandu (2024), Monetary Architecture and the Green Transition, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 56 (2), pp. 382-401.

Murau, Steffen and Matteo Giordano (2024), Forging Monetary Unification through Novation. The TARGET System and the Politics of Central Banking in Europe, Socio-Economic Review, 22 (3), pp. 1283-1312.

Golka, Phillip, Steffen Murau and Jan-Erik Thie (2024), Towards a Public Sustainable Finance Paradigm for the Green Transition, Finance and Society, 10 (1), pp. 38-50.

Murau, Steffen and Jens van ‘t Klooster (2023), Rethinking Monetary Sovereignty. The Global Credit Money System and the State, Perspectives on Politics, 21 (4), pp. 1319–1336.

Murau, Steffen, Fabian Pape, and Tobias Pforr (2023), International Monetary Hierarchy through Emergency US-Dollar Liquidity. A Key Currency Approach, Competition and Change, 27 (3-4), pp. 495–515.

Guter-Sandu, Andrei and Steffen Murau (2021), The Eurozone’s Evolving Fiscal Ecosystem. Mitigating Fiscal Discipline by Governing through Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies, New Political Economy, pp. 1-19.

Braun, Benjamin, Aaron Krampf, and Steffen Murau (2021), Financial globalization as positive integration. Monetary Technocrats and the Eurodollar market in the 1970s, Review of International Political Economy, 28 (4), pp. 794-819.

Murau, Steffen and Tobias Pforr (2020), What is Money in a Critical Macro-Finance Framework?, Finance and Society, 6 (1), pp. 56-66.

Murau, Steffen, Johannes Rini, and Armin Haas (2020), The Evolution of the Offshore US-Dollar System. Past, Present and Four Possible Futures, Journal of Institutional Economics, 16 (6), pp. 767-783.

Working papers and reports:

Stichler, Paul, Armin Haas, Friederike Reimer and Steffen Murau (2026), Credit Money Creation under Socialism. The Monetary Architecture of the German Democratic Republic, 1949–1990, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 13-EN.

Swilling, Marc and Steffen Murau (2025), The Transformation of South Africa’s Monetary Architecture, 1983-2024, Report for South Africa’s National Planning Commission.

McEvoy, Olan, Fanny Chaltiel, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Steffen Murau (2025), A Silent Revolution in the Suburbs. Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies in U.S. Mortgage Finance, 1932-1981, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 11-EN.

McEvoy, Olan, Moritz Kapff, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Steffen Murau (2025), Mind the MacMillan Gap. Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies in Britain’s Post-War Industrial Financing, 1945-1973, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 10-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Guter-Sandu, Andrei, Verena Gradinger, Olan McEvoy, and Steffen Murau (2025), From Stabilisation to Strategic Mobilisation. The Exchange Equalisation Account as a Wartime Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agency, 1932-1945, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 9-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Haas, Armin, Verena Gradinger, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Steffen Murau (2025), Après le Déluge. Managing Balance Sheet Contraction after the First World War, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 8-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Haas, Armin, Andrei Guter-Sandu, Olan McEvoy, Steffen Murau (2025), All Quiet on the Fiscal Front? Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies in the German War Economy, 1914-1918, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 7-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Murau, Steffen and Torsten Ehlers (2025), A Feature, not a Bug. The US Dollar in the European Monetary Union, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 6-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Murau, Steffen and Herman Mark Schwartz (2025), Decoding Dollar Dominance. The Global Credit View on the Monetary System in International Political Economy, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 5-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

van ‘t Klooster, Jens and Steffen Murau (2025), Rethinking Currency Internationalisation. Offshore Money Creation and the EU’s Monetary Governance, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 4-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Reimer, Friederike, Andrei Guter-Sandu, Armin Haas, and Steffen Murau (2024), Schrödinger’s Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agency. The Recovery and Resilience Facility and the Limits to Incremental Fiscal Integration in Europe, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 3-EN.

Haas, Armin, Friederike Reimer, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Steffen Murau (2024), The Mefo Operation. A Macro-Financial Analysis of Camouflaged Sovereign Borrowing through Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies, 1933-1945, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 2-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Gregor Laudage, Armin Haas, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Steffen Murau (2024), State Finance Beyond the Core Budget. Off-Balance-Sheet Fiscal Agencies in Germany’s Fiscal Ecosystem, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper No. 1-EN, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Gregor Laudage, Armin Haas, Andrei Guter-Sandu, and Steffen Murau(2024), Staatsfinanzen jenseits des Kernhaushalts. Bilanzexterne Fiskalagenturen im deutschen fiskalischen Ökosystem, OBFA-TRANSFORM Working Paper Nr. 1-DE, Berlin: Global Climate Forum.

Murau, Steffen, Alexandru-Stefan Goghie, and Matteo Giordano (2024), Encumbered Security? Conceptualising Vertical and Horizontal Repos in the Euro Area, SOAS Department of Economics Working Paper No. 262.

Murau, Steffen (2024), Staatsverschuldung und Transformation der monetären Architektur in Preußen und dem Deutschen Kaiserreich, 1740-1914, Dezernat Zukunft Hintergrundpapier.

GEGI Studies:

Murau, Steffen, Alexandru-Stefan Goghie, Matteo Giordano, and Friederike Reimer (2025), Transformation of the Eurozone Architecture. Crises and Institutional Change in the Offshore US-Dollar System, GEGI Study.

Murau, Steffen, Fabian Pape, and Tobias Pforr (2021), The Hierarchy of the Offshore US-Dollar System. On Swap Lines, the FIMA Repo Facility and Special Drawing Rights, GEGI Study.

Murau, Steffen (2020), A Macro-Financial Model of the Eurozone Architecture Embedded in the Global Offshore US-Dollar System, GEGI Study.

For all publications visit steffenmurau.com/publications