Officials must show that they understand why and how the public's confidence in the federal government's ability to manage financial turmoil was lost. Leaders of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission must face up to their institutions' roles in an...

This paper traces the financial institution crisis of 2007-2008 to a breakdown in the incentives of regulators, supervisors, managers, and investors to perform adequate due diligence on securitized investments. Investors allowed their trust in the reputations of credit rating firms and the giant...

To be effective, programs of regulatory reform must address the incentive conflicts that intensify financial risk-taking and undermine government insolvency detection and crisis management. Subsidies to risk taking that large institutions extract from the financial safety net encourage managers...