Clark Center Forum

Christian Leuz and other members of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee The recent G20 meetings demonstrated the substantial divide between policymakers over the right approach toward the “too-big-to-fail” problem for large, global financial institutions. Some policymakers accept that some financial firms will inevitably be too-big-to-fail and wish to focus policy efforts on facilitating orderly bailouts […] 

VoxEU US Congressional committees are now grilling bankers on the complex instruments that provided subprime mortgages with a veil of security. This column presents new evidence that subprime mortgages had more serious consequences – they were a key factor in the US housing-price boom. When house prices faltered, subprime mortgage holders defaulted en masse, eventually […] 

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are set to become the global accounting language. Empirical evidence suggests, however, that IFRS adoption alone will not lead to global convergence of reporting practices, and will not make comparing companies’ financial statements as easy as many have hoped. True convergence in reporting practices would require a much broader convergence […] 

Businessweek; April 1, 2010 The Dodd financial reform bill, which awaits the Senate after its two-week break, is loaded with good intentions. But does it do enough to keep banks from going out on a limb for profits? Read article> 

Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales National Affairs, Spring 2010 The financial crisis of 2008 had many causes. They ranged from a housing bubble to excessive speculation, and from inadequate accounting rules to reckless corporate governance. But at the heart of the meltdown were the financial industry’s distorted incentives — created in large part by decades […] 

Testimony of Anil K Kashyap in “Examining the Link Between Fed Bank Supervision and Monetary Policy” before the House Financial Services Committee, United States House of Representatives – March 17, 2010 Read testimony> 

U.S. Monetary Policy Forum; New York, New York February 26, 2010 On Friday February 26, the IGM hosted its annual “U.S. Monetary Policy Forum” conference that featured a report on Financial Conditions Indices and a panel discussion on Financial Regulatory Reform.  The Panel was moderated by David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal and featured […] 

This post makes available an autobiographical note by Gene Fama that was commissioned by the Annual Review of Financial Economics. Gene’s remarkable career and vision, to say nothing of his engaging writing style, make this short piece a must read for anyone interested in finance. However, as his colleagues, we believe his modesty led him […] 

Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales FT.com, February 7th, 2010 In the struggle to identify how to avoid a repeat of last year’s financial crisis there is an emerging consensus among regulators, academics and practitioners that contingent convertible (Coco) bonds are the way to go. The idea is to have some debt in the capital structure […] 

Regulation Winter 2009-2010 With the benefit of a year’s hindsight, we can now look on the financial crisis and determine what was really the central problem, as well as identify what are the most important policy changes needed to avoid repeating the crisis. In my view, the usual suspects — “global imbalances” of saving or […]