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...

This lecture examines the causes of the global financial crisis, showing it was triggered by market failures, not by financial institution failures, and arguing that any regulatory framework for managing systemic risk must address markets as well as institutions. The lecture also analyzes how...

Although microfinance is emerging as a key tool to alleviate poverty, the need for microfinance lending vastly exceeds the amount of funds that can be raised from charitable donors. Commercial bank lending is supplementing donor money, but microfinance loans made by banks are extremely expensive...

In recent articles, the author has argued that the global financial crisis can be attributed in large part to three causes — conflicts, complacency and complexity — as well as to a type of tragedy of the commons. This article, which comprised the keynote address for the 2010 Corporate Law...

Most of the regulatory measures to control excessive risk taking by systemically important firms are designed to reduce moral hazard and to align the interests of managers and investors. These measures may be flawed because they are based on questionable assumptions. Excessive corporate risk...

Domestic and international regulatory efforts to prevent another financial crisis have been converging on the idea of trying to end the problem of “too big to fail”—that systemically important financial firms take excessive risks because they profit from success and are (or at least,...

There are few types of securities as internationally traded as those issued in securitization (also spelled securitisation) transactions. The post-financial crisis regulatory responses to securitization in the United States and Europe are, at least in part, political and ad hoc. To achieve a...