This Inaugural Lecture in the Distinguished Visitor Public Lecture Series of Trinity College Dublin School of Law synthesizes, in a readily accessible form, several of my recent articles examining why and how governments should regulate risk-taking by banks and other systemically important...

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...

A major focus of finance is reducing risk on investments, a goal commonly achieved by dispersing the risk among numerous investors. Sometimes, however, risk dispersion can cause investors to underestimate and under-protect against risk. Risk can even be so widely dispersed that rational...

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...

Although governments could protect against the economic devastation of future pandemics by requiring businesses to insure against pandemic-related risks, insurers do not currently offer that insurance. Even given sufficient actuarial data to set underwriting standards and rate tables, insurers...