Clark Center Forum

IGM, Global Market Series, number 1 This report is the first of the Global Market Series, which will focus on timely subjects in international business, financial markets, and public policy. Reports in this series will combine insights from scholarly research with other valuable ideas and analysis from other sources. The Initiative on Global Markets, at […] 

Eric A. Posner and Luigi Zingales *UPDATED* The housing crisis threatens to destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of value by causing homeowners with  negative equity to walk away from their houses. A house in foreclosure is worth 30 to 50 percent less than a house that a homeowner either retains or sells on the […] 

The Squam Lake Working Group on Financial Regulation is a nonpartisan, nonaffiliated group of fifteen academics who have come together to offer guidance on the reform of financial regulation. Four Chicago Booth Faculty (John Cochrane, Douglas Diamond, Anil Kashyap and Raghuram Rajan) are members. The group’s first memo describing a “New Information Infrastructure for Financial […] 

Pietro Veronesi and Luigi Zingales City Journal – February 19, 2009 In spite of great expectations, the Financial Stability Plan that Treasury secretary Tim Geithner presented last Tuesday was short on details. Its biggest innovation was a way for the government to persuade private investors to buy toxic assets from banks. The investors would have […] 

Interview with Raghuram Rajan NPR’s Morning Edition; February 18th, 2009 As the government attempts to stabilize the nation’s financial system, officials must decide whether to continue to prop up banks as private entities, nationalize them or shut them down. NPR’s Ari Shapiro asked economist Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business […] 

Douglas Diamond, Anil Kashyap, and Raghuram Rajan Freakanomics Blog – February 12, 2009 Timothy Geithner has announced his intention of making a full-scale attack on the nation’s banking problems. Clearly, the objective of making banks willing to lend again — with them paying due, but not excessive, attention to risks — is the right one. […] 

Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales 2.25 million foreclosures were filed last year and at least 1.7 million are expected this year. This dramatic housing crisis is at the origin of the current financial and economic woes our country is experiencing. But if you were to look at Washington, you would hardly notice. Last February, Senator […] 

Forbes The ongoing financial crisis poses two issues. One is how to clean up the current mess and the second is how to reform the system once the crisis is over. In regards to the second issue, which in the long run is probably the more important one, calls for a new and tighter regulation […] 

Douglas W. Diamond and Raghuram G. Rajan What caused the financial crisis that is sweeping across the world? What keeps asset prices and lending depressed? What can be done to remedy matters? While it is too early to arrive at definite answers to these questions, it is certainly time to offer informed conjectures, and these […] 

Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales If a modern Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep two years ago and woken up now, he would wonder what had happened to the U.S. economy. Two years ago we were in the middle of an economic boom. Banks were eager to lend even at the cost of forgoing important […]