Regulation of Banking and Financial Markets
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LAW AND ECONOMICS: REGULATION AND ECONOMICS, 2nd Edition, A.M. Pacces and R.J. Van den Bergh, eds., Elgar, 2012
Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics (RILE) Working Paper No. 2011/04
49 Pages Posted: 23 Aug 2011 Last revised: 13 Apr 2017
Date Written: May 1, 2011
Abstract
This paper is one chapter of the volume “Regulation and Economics” of the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics.
The authors review the economics of banking and financial markets and the regulatory response to market failure. Market failure in finance depends on problems of information and externalities. Regulation addresses these problems through conduct of business rules and prudential requirements. This approach has recently proved insufficient to prevent financial crises. Governments and central banks had to step in with massive safety nets in order to prevent financial meltdown. Although the appropriate regulatory response to the global financial crisis is still to be discovered, this chapter tries to draw a few lessons for financial regulation and supervision.
First, prudential regulation and supervision should monitor, and possibly limit, competition between banks and non-banks in order to identify timely new sources of systemic risk. Second, financial stability policies need to strike a difficult balance between ex-ante strictness and ex-post leniency in order to deal with non-quantifiable risks. Moral hazard is not the only determinants of systemic instability; knightian uncertainty also determines instability by suddenly curtailing market and funding liquidity. Third, all financial institutions falling within the regulatory perimeter should have good corporate governance. However, what is good governance for non-financial firms is not necessarily efficient for financial firms due to the quality and quantity of externalities involved. Finally, because systemic externalities are cross-jurisdictional in modern financial markets, at least coordination among monetary and supervisory authorities of different countries is warranted.
Keywords: Regulation, Information, Moral Hazard, Banking, Insurance, Financial Markets, Financial Crisis, Corporate Governance, Uncertainty, Liquidity
JEL Classification: G01, G28, G38, K20, K23
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
The Role and the Future of Regulation in the Financial Crisis: The Uncertainty Perspective
-
Consequences of Uncertainty for Regulation: Law and Economics of the Financial Crisis