A recent special issue of Review of International Political Economy, co-edited by GSD Assistant Professor Nick Bernards, looks at the politics of emerging technologies in global finance.

New financial technologies ('fintech') have attracted growing media and policy attention in recent years, drawing both a good deal of hype about their potential benefits and concerns about the possibilities for abuse, surveillance, and instability created by new technologies. Despite this, there has remained little critical social science literature looking at the driving forces behind the promotion and adoption of fintech. This project aims to begin addressing that gap.

The issue includes eight articles touching on subjects including uses and abuses of Big Data in microcredit, digital technologies and remittances, platform lending, high-frequency trading and alternative credit data. Along with editing the collection, Dr. Bernards contributed a co-authored introductory article, and a sole-authored article on psychometric credit scoring and financial inclusion.