In recent years, as workers have gained an unprecedented degree of control over their pensions and savings, the importance of financial literacy and financial education has increased considerably. Large changes in the structure of financial markets, labor markets, and demographics in developed...

An intense debate over the choice of regulatory authority, e.g., state vs. federal regulation, continues in the U.S. The debate not only exhibits the diversity of political and economic interests of various groups such as the federal government, state governments and the NAIC, insurance...

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...

Since passage of the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the government has been explicitly and implicitly regulating the compensation of top managers at a number of U.S. banks. In addition, bank regulators have added evaluations of bank management compensation packages to the list of factors...

In recent years, the need for financial education has gained the attention of a wide range of entities including banking companies, government agencies, grass-roots consumer and community interest groups, universities, schools, and other organizations. Numerous factors have led to a complex,...

Building on the literature emphasizing banks’ monitoring functions, recent contributions to the literature examining the effects of capital regulation have focused attention on the influences of capital requirements on bank incentives to monitor loans for moral hazard risks. Empirical evidence...

The history of regulation in America is as old as the republic itself. Since colonial times, Americans have struggled with the conflict between the desire for individual freedom and economic growth, and the need for rules and structure in a civil society. The evolution of the United States from...

Despite the presence of many and diverse sellers of insurance in most markets, insurance prices in some markets remain subject to regulation by state governments. Insurance rate regulation has a long and storied history in this country and the reasons for its continued existence are subject to...

In October 2005, the agencies that supervise U.S. depository institutions proposed changes in the Basel I capital requirements that will apply to the banks that will not be subject to the new Basel II capital requirements. An objective of the U.S. bank supervisors for proposing changes in Basel...

Our country has been through economic Hell the past three years. (See the report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, www.fcic.gov.) The turmoil that began in 2008 with the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and continued with the failure of American International Group (AIG),...