"Presents research from experts in academia and the financial industry on financial instruments and new financial institutions, contrasting developments in the United States and Japan. Highlights innovative ways in which Japanese financiers and government officials have learned from the United...

Contributors -- About the co-editors -- Background on George Kaufman's contributions to the finance profession -- Public policy and financial economics : comments to honor George G. Kaufman / Charles L. Evans -- 57 years of banking changes and ideas / Alex J. Pollock -- Theory vs. practice and...

In view of preliminary lessons learnt from the global financial crisis since 2007, the paper develops a conceptual framework for the functional analysis of bank insolvency regimes and, against this background, analyses a package of reforms adopted in Germany in 2010