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Asker is a PhD graduate at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).
He holds a Master’s degree in Political Science and International Political Economy from the University of Copenhagen.
During the Covid-19 crisis, Asker has worked as research lead for the IIPP’s participation in the Vatican COVID-19 Commission’s Economic Taskforce. The Vatican and the Pope requested the advice of the IIPP to provide an analytical lens to rethink contemporary capitalism during and after the crisis. Asker led the creation of nine topical briefs to inform the deliberations in the Vatican.
His dissertation was supervised by Professor Ben Rosamond and analysed the operational realities of the Danish monetary system, which led to a critique of conventional theories of money and the role of the financial sector in economics. It was concluded, in accordance with modern monetary theory, that the Danish government is not financially constrained by the current institutional arrangements. It was further discussed how misunderstandings of the monetary system led politicians to adopt austerity policies in 2010.
He holds a BA in Political Science from Aarhus University and has during his MA studied at Sophia University in Tokyo and interned at Denmark’s EU representation in the section of energy and climate policy. Before commencing his Ph.D., he worked at the Danish Ministry of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs.
Research summary
The provisional title of Asker’s project is: Financial structures, green innovation and green capital development.
The goal of the project is to track and map the financing of new renewable energy capacity and understand how the political and institutional environment affects an economy’s ability to deliver green capital development.
The current research design aims to utilise a unique deal-level database over financing of renewable energy in a dual-case analysis of the United Kingdom and Denmark since the 1990s. The fine-grained database will enable the finance flows to be tracked into the two differential financial structures at both micro and meso level.
This mapping will open up an avenue for more qualitative and comparative analyses of what influences the decision-making of the various parts of the financial structure and provide new knowledge about how institutions and policy can shape financial markets to deliver on the global goals for the green transition.
From a theoretical point of view, the study will seek to combine post-keynesian and neo-schumpeterian theories of the financial sector, investment and innovation processes.