One of the most important issues in the regulatory reform debate is that of systemically important financial institutions. This paper proposes a framework for identifying and supervising such institutions; the framework is designed to remove the advantages they derive from becoming systemically...

Financial crises remain a recurring problem despite, or perhaps, as some suggest, because of, extensive innovation in capital markets over the past several decades. Crisis interventions are fraught with trade-offs: What are the costs of doing nothing? What is the probability that markets will...

The guaranteed lending programs of the Small Business Administration (SBA) are large and growing rapidly. The SBA's fiscal year 2008 performance budget calls for $25 billion in guaranteed loans for small businesses - a new record for the agency. Some critics of SBA programs suggest they do not...