An important goal of financial risk regulation is promoting coordination. Law's coordinating function minimizes costly conflict and encourages greater uniformity among market participants. Likewise, privately developed market standards, such as standard-form contracts and rules incorporated into...

We investigate the trade-off between incentive provision and inefficient rollover freezes for a firm financed with staggered short-term debt. First, debt maturity that is too short-term is inefficient, even with incentive provision. The optimal maturity is an interior solution that avoids...

The author covers the Northern Rock affair and the subsequent instability in the UK financial system in the context of the history and desired future role of the Bank of England as a central bank. Tim Congdon, a respected monetary economist, shows how the Bank of England failed in its duties to...

"Control frauds" are seemingly legitimate entities controlled by persons that use them as a fraud "weapon." (The person that controls the firm is typically the CEO, so that term is used in this testimony.) A single control fraud can cause greater losses than all other forms of property crime...

This article analyzes the last financial crisis focusing on the recurrent dynamics of externalities in banking. It shows that two major determinants of the crisis were the uncertainty of a new form of financial intermediation and the failure of regulation to cope with its externalities....

Contrary to rumors that the Dodd-Frank Act is an incoherent mess, its 2,319 pages have two very clear objectives: limiting the risk of the shadow banking system by more carefully regulating derivatives and large financial institutions; and limiting the damage caused by a financial institution's...

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, Congress has sought to regulate the proprietary trading activities of Wall Street banks. The Volcker Rule, passed into law as section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Act, bans proprietary trading for deposit-taking banks and bank holding companies with...

During 2008 and 2009 Australian listed entities raised large amounts of equity capital as the global financial crisis led to a significant tightening in credit markets. Over these two years listed entity after listed entity recapitalised, seeking additional equity to replace debt as lenders,...