Opening remarks to "Beyond Pillar 3 in International Banking Regulation: Disclosure and Market Discipline of Financial Firms," a Conference Cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia Business School, October 2-3, 2003.

If we are to modernize our regulatory system and allow banks the flexibility to adapt to financial change, it is essential that we ask the right questions about the purposes of bank regulation. Currently, much of the regulatory debate focuses on the age-old question: Where do we draw the line...

How policymakers frame an economic problem inevitably restricts the range of policy solutions they entertain. It is important to prevent restrictions on the range of policy options being explored from undermining the quality of policy performance. This implies that outside economists should...

We use a spatial model to investigate a state’s choice of branch banking and interstate banking regimes as a function of the regime choices made by other states and other variables suggested in the literature. We extend the basic spatial econometric model by allowing spatial dependence to vary...

How to best manage the failure of systemically important financial firms was the theme of a recent conference at which the latest research on the issue was presented. Here we summarize that research, the discussions that it sparked, and the areas where considerable work remains.