This is one of three lectures I am giving in December 2012 at universities and government agencies in Shanghai and Beijing. In the context of comparing Western and Chinese shadow banking concerns and regulatory responses, this lecture addresses three broad questions: What is shadow banking...

In the modern financial architecture, financial services and products increasingly are provided outside of the traditional banking system — and thus without the need for bank intermediation between capital markets and the users of funds. Most corporate financing, for example, no longer is...

Although shadow banking is said to be huge, estimated at over $60 trillion, it is not well defined. This short and accessible paper attempts to define shadow banking by identifying its overall scope and its basic characteristics. Based on the definition derived, the paper also conceptually...

This accessible analysis of systemic risk regulation was delivered as the keynote speech at an October 20, 2011 European Central Bank conference on regulation of financial services. Many regulatory responses, like the Dodd-Frank Act in the United States, consist largely of politically motivated...

The global financial crisis demonstrated the inability and unwillingness of financial market participants to safeguard the stability of the financial system. It also highlighted the enormous direct and indirect costs of addressing systemic crises after they have occurred, as opposed to...

Complexity is the greatest challenge to 21st Century financial regulation, having the potential to impair markets and investments in several interrelated ways. Furthermore, complexity can cause failures that individual market participants cannot, or will not have incentive to, remedy. These...

Systemic risk management is at the forefront of financial regulatory agendas worldwide. The global financial crisis was a powerful demonstration of the inability and unwillingness of financial market participants to carry out the task of safeguarding the stability of the financial system. It...

Much regulatory effort has been devoted to improving mortgage lending, the principal source of housing finance. To date, that effort has primarily been microprudential — intended to correct market failures in order to increase economic efficiency. In contrast, and while there is some overlap,...

The conventional wisdom is that derivatives are exotic and uniquely risky, although innovative, financial instruments. That perception has given rise to a regulatory patchwork described as confusing, incomplete, and contradictory. This article rethinks how derivatives should be regulated. It...

To protect economic stability, post-crisis regulation requires financial institutions to clear and settle most of their derivatives contracts through central counterparties, such as clearinghouses associated with derivatives and commodity exchanges. This Article asks whether regulators should...