In many industries there are firms whose owners are also customers. They have contrasting interests: they get more utility as the firm's profits increase, and the prices of the good decreases as their private consumer surplus increases. An interesting example is the stock exchange industry. This...

The protection of savings and the creation of insurance schemes is becoming a hot topic for the European Union Regulator: incoming Directives seem to state a sort of "financial guarantee scheme model" valid not only for deposit insurance but also for investor compensation schemes in case of...

Updated May 2012 and reposted: In 2011, an EU legislative package on market abuse was proposed, which comprises two sets of documents: 1) a draft Regulation that will largely replace the existing Market Abuse Directive (MAD) and the level 2 measures; and a new Directive dealing with criminal...

The European Commission has published its proposals for the transfer of supervisory responsibilities to the European Central Bank, under Article 127(6) of the TFEU, providing a comprehensive and courageous ‘first step’ towards a European banking union, the other steps being European deposit...

A relevant and current policy debate is whether banking supervision should be assigned to the same institution (the central bank) that is responsible for monetary policy. This paper reviews the theoretical arguments advanced in favour and against the solution of having banking supervision...

The objective of the present work is to sketch a proposal for the re-organisation of regulatory arrangements and supervisory agencies in Italy. This proposal follows the evolving role of financial markets and intermediaries in modern economies and is based on previous experiences in the matter...

In this paper, we discuss pros and cons of different models for financial market regulation and supervision and we present a proposal for the re-organisation of regulatory and supervisory agencies in the Euro Area. Our arguments are consistent with both new theories and effective behaviour of...

This paper adds some new arguments to the thesis that the responsibility for banking supervision should be assigned to an agency formally separated by the Central bank. We also provide some additional evidence on the macro and microeconomic performance of OECD countries whose banking systems are...