Clark Center Forum

Yahoo! Finance, July  20, 2009 Professor Zingales talks to Yahoo! Finance about what Wall Street will look like in 2015; a new mortgage plan; and CIT Group’s rescue plan. CIT Rescue Plan Proves Capitalism Works Wall St. in Danger of Losing Its Crown as King of Finance Time for a New Morgage Plan 

City Journal, Spring 2009 The American system of financial regulation is a patchwork of agencies. At least ten federal regulators oversee financial-services companies; different regulators sometimes supervise the same entities; and since the onset of the financial crisis, regulatory agencies have taken on roles not originally envisioned or mandated, leading to further redundancy. This patchwork […] 

Credit default swaps (CDS) are contracts that provide protection against the risk of default by borrowers. The buyer of the CDS makes periodic payments to the seller, and in return the buyer will receive a payoff if the borrower defaults, analogous to an insurance contract. While credit default swaps can be a valuable tool for […] 

Forbes, July 13th, 2009 New York’s preeminent industry has changed forever In the 15th and 16th centuries, Florence, Genoa, and Venice were the financial capitals of the Western world.  When they declined, financial leadership shifted to Amsterdam, then to London and finally to New York, whose supremacy went unchallenged from 1945 until the end of […] 

Financial Times, June 29th, 2009 Buried within the 88-page Obama administration proposal to overhaul financial regulation is an overlooked option called a “rapid resolution plan”. It mandates that systemically important financial companies be required regularly to file a “funeral plan”: a set of instructions for how the institution could be quickly dismantled should the need […] 

Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales The Economist, June 26th, 2009 Professors Zingales, Sapienza, and Guiso’s new research examines American homeowners’ propensity to default when the value of a mortgage exceeds the value of their house, even if they can afford to pay their mortgage. Read Economist article> For additional information, please see Professors […] 

Wall Street Journal, June 25th, 2009 Using research funded by the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Professors Atif Mian and Amir Sufi argue that the “rise in house prices from 2002 to 2006 was a main driver of economic growth during this time period, and the subsequent […] 

The Economist; May 16th, 2009 An new article in the May 16th Economist details new research from Professor Luigi Zingales and his co-author Oliver Hart regarding bank regulation. Read Economist article> For additional information, please see Professors Zingales and Hart’s article, A New Capital Regulation for Large Financial Institutions 

R. Glenn Hubbard, Hal Scott, and Luigi Zingales Wall Street Journal; May 6th, 2009 The results of bank stress tests — expected tomorrow — will no doubt prompt calls for further government guarantees and capital injections. But continuing to prop up the banks with government cash is a mistake. There is a better approach. Read […] 

Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales City Journal; April 29, 2009 The word for “crisis in Chinese, weiji, is written with two characters: one (wei) means danger; the other (ji) means opportunity.  That’s because every crisis challenges the status quo and in so doing creates the opportunity for something new to emerge. “This process of Creative […]