This paper develops a micro-founded general equilibrium model of the financial system composed of ultimate borrowers, ultimate lenders and financial intermediaries. The model is used to investigate the impact of uncertainty about the likelihood of governmental bailouts on leverage, interest...

Ever since severe turmoil enveloped the financial markets in the fall of 2008, commentators have blamed deregulation of the financial system, and specifically the supposed “repeal” of the Glass-Steagall Act by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, for the crisis. This has led many to advocate...

A dozen years ago, Randall Kroszner, soon to be one of George W. Bush's economic advisors and a Governor of the Federal Reserve, could comment in a Levy Institute seminar, without fear of contradiction, that there was no evidence to back the “public interest rationale” for the separation of...

The stunning failure of banks put regulatory intervention high on the agenda of governments. Adequate risk monitoring, including by credit rating agencies, measurement and management have proven to be a daunting task, whereas regulation of innovative financial instruments has not brought about...

In mortgage debt contracts, real property serves as collateral and the terms of mortgage financing are largely conditional on the certification of collateral value by appraisers. However, overstatement of collateral value is common in the appraisal industry, causing troubles in the mortgage...

This paper uses occupational employment and wage data for over 270 industries from 1990 to 2017 to estimate the percentage of an industry’s annual labor costs paid to perform regulation-related tasks. We hypothesize that this measure reflects the intensity of regulations that incentivize firm...

The current financial upheaval has brought about a reconsideration of regulatory and corporate practices in the financial sector. This paper claims that the current multilateral framework regulating services, that is, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), should be revisited to...

As BigTechs and other large technology companies continue to consolidate core market positions and expand their business lines, dependencies on these companies, both social and economic, are increasing. However, policymakers lack a common framework to monitor activities and any emerging...

Despite continued attempts by regulators to curtail abusive short sales and increase transparency, the pattern and practice of fraudulent manipulation continues to proliferate and threaten the capitalization of a wide variety of issuers within the securities market. Identifying a meaningful...

The Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF) lent $2.3 trillion worth of general collateral to eighteen investment houses in exchange for riskier securities. Treasury collateral was in high demand in 2008 and 2009 as repo markets shunned lower quality collateral. This paper finds a negative and...