Dr Sean Vanatta

  • Senior Lecturer in Financial History and Policy (Political & International Studies)

email: Sean.Vanatta@glasgow.ac.uk

616 Gilbert Scott, Main Building, University of Glasgow, g12 8qq

Import to contacts

ORCID iDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720

Biography

I write about and teach modern United States history, with an emphasis on the political economy of finance. I am working on several projects that collectively address the intersection of democracy, finance, and the regulatory state in the modern America. 

My first book, Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control (Yale University Press, 2024), reevaluates the rise of finance in the post-World War II United States and, with it, the rise and fall of New Deal economic liberalism. Beginning in the 1950s, the book argues, profit-seeking bankers exploited American federalism to avoid consumer regulations, using credit cards to connect far-flung consumers with volatile, global capital markets, leading to the indebted nation we know today. 

In my second book, Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Peter Conti-Brown and I examine bank supervision--the processes of continuous government oversight of the financial system--from its development in the 1830s to the Volcker shock in the early 1980s. The book argues that supervision operates as a space where public officials and private bankers negotiate shared management of the residual risks of the financial system.

I have several ongoing research projects. First, I am examining how state employee pension plans, through their investment activities, reshaped private financial markets and public welfare in the postwar United States. With Michael R. Glass, I develop some preliminary findings about New York State in an article appearing in Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics. Second, I am developing a new project on global Great Depression, using foreign sovereign debt held by small, rural U.S. banks as a window onto the global financial networks that grew in the interwar years and collapsed and reformed in the 1930s.

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I received my Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2018 and took MA and undergraduate degrees at the University of Georgia. Before joining the University of Glasgow in September 2020, I taught in the Gallatin School for Individualized Study at New York University and in Princeton University’s Writing Program. I have been a senior fellow at the Wharton Initiative for Financial Policy and Regulation and have held the National Endowment for the Humanities Hagley Postdoctoral Fellowship in Business, Culture, and Society and the John E. Rovensky Fellowship in US Business and Economic History.

I am currently a non-resident fellow at Princeton's Julis-Robinowitz Center for Public Policy & Finance.

Research interests

  • Financial institutions and markets
  • Financial regulation and supervision
  • Consumer politics and activism
  • Economic planning
  • Federalism
  • Pensions and retirement
  • Public infrastructure
  • The history of capitalism
  • Financialization
  • Economic thought

Research groups

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016
Number of items: 23.

2025

Conti-Brown, Peter and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2025) Risk, discretion, and bank supervision. Columbia Business Law Review, (Accepted for Publication)

Conti-Brown, Peter and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2025) Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691232829 (In Press)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720, Hotori, Eiji and Yago, Kazuhiko (2025) Introduction to special issue on human capital in financial regulation and supervision. Management and Organizational History, (doi: 10.1080/17449359.2024.2446244) (Early Online Publication)

2024

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2024) Revolving door governance: bank supervisors in the United States, 1863–1933. Management and Organizational History, 19(3), pp. 153-181. (doi: 10.1080/17449359.2024.2353797)

Vanatta, Sean ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2024) Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control. Yale University Press: New Haven. ISBN 9780300247343

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2024) The financialization of US public pension funds, 1945–1974. Review of Social Economy, 82(2), pp. 261-293. (doi: 10.1080/00346764.2023.2270458)

2023

Ballor, Grace, Recio, Gabriela and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2023) Surveillance archive: using reports in business history. Management and Organizational History, 18(1), pp. 43-53. (doi: 10.1080/17449359.2023.2179072)

2022

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2022) Benjamin Holtzman. The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. xiii + 331 pp. ISBN 9780190843700, $34.95 (cloth). Enterprise and Society, 23(2), pp. 594-596. (doi: 10.1017/eso.2022.10)[Book Review]

2021

Conti-Brown, Peter and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2021) The logic and legitimacy of bank supervision: the case of the bank holiday of 1933. Business History Review, 95(1), pp. 87-120. (doi: 10.1017/S0007680520000896)

Glass, Michael R. and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2021) The frail bonds of liberalism: pensions, schools, and the unraveling of fiscal mutualism in postwar New York. Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, 2(2), pp. 427-472. (doi: 10.1353/cap.2021.0009)

2020

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2020) Histories of Bank Supervision. Bank Supervision: Past, Present, and Future, 11 Dec 2020. (Unpublished)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2020) Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets. By Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xvi + 357 pp. Illustrations, tables, appendix, bibliography, index. Cloth, $39.99. ISBN: 978-1-108-49642-1. Business History Review, 94(4), pp. 855-858. (doi: 10.1017/S0007680520000835)[Book Review]

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 and Pippenger, Randall Todd (2020) The gift. In: Creager, Angela N.H. (ed.) Building on Stone: Perspectives on the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Fifty. Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University, pp. 7-13.

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 and Pippenger, Randall Todd (2020) "Let's Have at It": The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Fifty. Davis Center for Historical Studies: Princeton, NJ.

2019

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2019) The Municipal Banking Movement: An Opportunity for Baltimore. Project Report. Abell Foundation, Baltimore, MD.

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2019) Market Rules: Bankers, Presidents, and the Origins of the Great Recession. ByMark H. Rose. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. xiv + 258 pp. Notes, index. Cloth $39.95. ISBN: 978-0-8122-5102-9. Business History Review, 93(1), pp. 215-218. (doi: 10.1017/S0007680519000540)[Book Review]

2018

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2018) Brine, Kevin R. and Poovey, Mary, Finance in America: an unfinished story ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. x+499. 3 figs. ISBN 9780226502045 Hbk. $110). Economic History Review, 71(4), pp. 1438-1439. (doi: 10.1111/ehr.12809)[Book Review]

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2018) Charge account banking: a study of financial innovation in the 1950s. Enterprise and Society, 19(2), pp. 352-390. (doi: 10.1017/eso.2017.42)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2018) Economics and capitalism—a historiographical survey. In: Podair, Jerald and Dochuk, Darren (eds.) The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States. Series: Routledge histories. Routledge: New York, pp. 104-115. ISBN 9781138892071

2017

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2017) Jumping the Abyss: Marriner S. Eccles and the New Deal, 1933–1940. By Mark Wayne Nelson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2017. Pp xxvi, 424. $39.00, hardcover. Journal of Economic History, 77(4), pp. 1236-1238. (doi: 10.1017/S0022050717000936)[Book Review]

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2017) Executive stewardship of America’s credit card economy. In: Rose, Mark H. and Biles, Roger (eds.) The President and American Capitalism Since 1945. Series: Alan B. Larkin series on the American presidency. University Press of Florida: Gainesville, FL, pp. 188-206. ISBN 9780813056524

2016

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2016) Protecting plastic: credit card fraud in historical perspective. In: Bátiz-Lazo, Bernardo and Efthymiou, Leonidas (eds.) The Book of Payments: Historical and Contemporary Views on the Cashless Society. Palgrave Macmillan: London, pp. 167-176. ISBN 9781137602305 (doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-60231-2_16)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2016) Citibank, credit cards, and the local politics of national consumer finance, 1968-1991. Business History Review, 90(1), pp. 57-80. (doi: 10.1017/S0007680515001038)

This list was generated on Fri Jul 11 03:22:37 2025 BST.
Jump to: Articles | Books | Book Sections | Book Reviews | Research Reports or Papers | Conference or Workshop Item
Number of items: 23.

Articles

Conti-Brown, Peter and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2025) Risk, discretion, and bank supervision. Columbia Business Law Review, (Accepted for Publication)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720, Hotori, Eiji and Yago, Kazuhiko (2025) Introduction to special issue on human capital in financial regulation and supervision. Management and Organizational History, (doi: 10.1080/17449359.2024.2446244) (Early Online Publication)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2024) Revolving door governance: bank supervisors in the United States, 1863–1933. Management and Organizational History, 19(3), pp. 153-181. (doi: 10.1080/17449359.2024.2353797)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2024) The financialization of US public pension funds, 1945–1974. Review of Social Economy, 82(2), pp. 261-293. (doi: 10.1080/00346764.2023.2270458)

Ballor, Grace, Recio, Gabriela and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2023) Surveillance archive: using reports in business history. Management and Organizational History, 18(1), pp. 43-53. (doi: 10.1080/17449359.2023.2179072)

Conti-Brown, Peter and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2021) The logic and legitimacy of bank supervision: the case of the bank holiday of 1933. Business History Review, 95(1), pp. 87-120. (doi: 10.1017/S0007680520000896)

Glass, Michael R. and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2021) The frail bonds of liberalism: pensions, schools, and the unraveling of fiscal mutualism in postwar New York. Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, 2(2), pp. 427-472. (doi: 10.1353/cap.2021.0009)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2018) Charge account banking: a study of financial innovation in the 1950s. Enterprise and Society, 19(2), pp. 352-390. (doi: 10.1017/eso.2017.42)

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2016) Citibank, credit cards, and the local politics of national consumer finance, 1968-1991. Business History Review, 90(1), pp. 57-80. (doi: 10.1017/S0007680515001038)

Books

Conti-Brown, Peter and Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2025) Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691232829 (In Press)

Vanatta, Sean ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2024) Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control. Yale University Press: New Haven. ISBN 9780300247343

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 and Pippenger, Randall Todd (2020) "Let's Have at It": The Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Fifty. Davis Center for Historical Studies: Princeton, NJ.

Book Sections

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 and Pippenger, Randall Todd (2020) The gift. In: Creager, Angela N.H. (ed.) Building on Stone: Perspectives on the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Fifty. Shelby Cullom Davis Center, Princeton University, pp. 7-13.

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2018) Economics and capitalism—a historiographical survey. In: Podair, Jerald and Dochuk, Darren (eds.) The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States. Series: Routledge histories. Routledge: New York, pp. 104-115. ISBN 9781138892071

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2017) Executive stewardship of America’s credit card economy. In: Rose, Mark H. and Biles, Roger (eds.) The President and American Capitalism Since 1945. Series: Alan B. Larkin series on the American presidency. University Press of Florida: Gainesville, FL, pp. 188-206. ISBN 9780813056524

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2016) Protecting plastic: credit card fraud in historical perspective. In: Bátiz-Lazo, Bernardo and Efthymiou, Leonidas (eds.) The Book of Payments: Historical and Contemporary Views on the Cashless Society. Palgrave Macmillan: London, pp. 167-176. ISBN 9781137602305 (doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-60231-2_16)

Book Reviews

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2022) Benjamin Holtzman. The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. xiii + 331 pp. ISBN 9780190843700, $34.95 (cloth). Enterprise and Society, 23(2), pp. 594-596. (doi: 10.1017/eso.2022.10)[Book Review]

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2020) Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets. By Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xvi + 357 pp. Illustrations, tables, appendix, bibliography, index. Cloth, $39.99. ISBN: 978-1-108-49642-1. Business History Review, 94(4), pp. 855-858. (doi: 10.1017/S0007680520000835)[Book Review]

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2019) Market Rules: Bankers, Presidents, and the Origins of the Great Recession. ByMark H. Rose. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. xiv + 258 pp. Notes, index. Cloth $39.95. ISBN: 978-0-8122-5102-9. Business History Review, 93(1), pp. 215-218. (doi: 10.1017/S0007680519000540)[Book Review]

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2018) Brine, Kevin R. and Poovey, Mary, Finance in America: an unfinished story ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. x+499. 3 figs. ISBN 9780226502045 Hbk. $110). Economic History Review, 71(4), pp. 1438-1439. (doi: 10.1111/ehr.12809)[Book Review]

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2017) Jumping the Abyss: Marriner S. Eccles and the New Deal, 1933–1940. By Mark Wayne Nelson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2017. Pp xxvi, 424. $39.00, hardcover. Journal of Economic History, 77(4), pp. 1236-1238. (doi: 10.1017/S0022050717000936)[Book Review]

Research Reports or Papers

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2019) The Municipal Banking Movement: An Opportunity for Baltimore. Project Report. Abell Foundation, Baltimore, MD.

Conference or Workshop Item

Vanatta, Sean H. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1340-4720 (2020) Histories of Bank Supervision. Bank Supervision: Past, Present, and Future, 11 Dec 2020. (Unpublished)

This list was generated on Fri Jul 11 03:22:37 2025 BST.

Grants

  • New Interdisciplinary Research Theme, College of Social Sciences (£30,000): “Political Economy Futures Forum” (PEFF), Co-Lead/ IRT Leadership Team, 2024-2027

Supervision

I would be excited to supervise research that focuses on modern American history, financial history, business history, or the history of capitalism--broadly defined. 

  • Li, Xin
    The Downfall of UK Pensions, 1960-2000

Teaching

Course Contribution 

Economic and Social History 1A and 1B

Researching Economic and Social History 1

Researching Economic and Social History 2

Honours module convening

Money and Finance in United States Society 

Masters module convening

Globalization of International Banking and Finance

Designing Your Research Project (Global Economy Research Methods)

Contributions to masters modules

The Globalized Economy

Business in the Global Economy 

 

Research datasets

Jump to: 2024 | 2022
Number of items: 2.

2024

Vanatta, S. (2024) Bank Examiner Turnover 1902-1931. [Data Collection]

2022

Vanatta, S. (2022) The Financialization of U.S. Public Pensions, 1945-1974. [Data Collection]

This list was generated on Fri Jul 11 21:44:05 2025 BST.

Dr Sean Vanatta on Bluesky