Law Commons^™

Race And Regulation Podcast Episode 9 - Board Diversity And Community Lending, Brian D. Feinstein

Penn Program on Regulation Podcasts

The racial wealth gap in the U.S. is driven in part by a lack of access to credit among communities of color. But as Brian D. Feinstein of the Wharton School relays in this episode, new empirical research indicates that increasing the level of diversity on regional Federal Reserve Bank boards improves credit access for underbanked minority communities. He draws out the major implications of this research not only for narrowing the racial wealth gap, but for understanding the role that diversity in institutional leadership, including on corporate boards, can play in advancing racial equity more broadly.

Secured Transactions Law Reform In Japan: Japan Business Credit Project Assessment Of Interviews And Tentative Policy Proposals, Megumi Hara, Kumiko Koens, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This article summarizes key findings from the Japan Business Credit Project (JBCP), which involved more than 30 semi-structured interviews conducted in Japan from 2016 through 2018. It was inspired by important and previously unexplored questions concerning secured financing of movables (business equipment and inventory) and claims (receivables)—“asset-based lending” or “ABL.” Why is the use of ABL in Japan so limited? What are the principal obstacles and disincentives to the use of ABL in Japan? The interviews were primarily with staff of banks, but also included those of government officials and regulators, academics, and law practitioners. The article proposes reforms of …

Equality And Access To Credit: A Social Contract Framework, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

The problems governments face in regulating consumer finance fall into two categories: normative and cognitive. The normative problems have to do with the way that some governments, particularly those adhering to an American model of household finance, have financed social mobility and intergenerational welfare through debt, a tenuous and socially risky policy choice. Credit has a substantial social aspect to it in the United States, where the federal government has in some way engaged in subsidizing about 1/3 of consumer credit, particularly in the residential mortgage market, feeding into a substantial capital markets dimension through government-guaranteed securitization. Most Americans think …

Financial Inclusion, Access To Credit, And Sustainable Finance, John Linarelli, Stephen L. Schwarcz, Ignacio Tirado

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Lost In Transplantation: Modern Principles Of Secured Transactions Law As Legal Transplants, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This manuscript will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming edited volume published by Hart Publishing, Secured Transactions Law in Asia: Principles, Perspectives and Reform (Louise Gullifer & Dora Neo eds., forthcoming 2020). It focuses on a set of principles (Modern Principles) that secured transactions law for personal property should follow. These Modern Principles are based on UCC Article 9 and its many progeny, including the UNCITRAL Model Law on Secured Transactions. The chapter situates the Modern principles in the context of the transplantation of law from one legal system to another. It draws in particular on Alan Watson’s pathbreaking …

Debt In Just Societies: A General Framework For Regulating Credit, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Debt presents a dilemma to societies: successful societies benefit from a substantial infrastructure of consumer, commercial, corporate, and sovereign debt but debt can cause substantial private and social harm. Pre- and post-crisis solutions have seesawed between subsidizing and restricting debt, between leveraging and deleveraging. A consensus exists among governments and international financial institutions that financial stability is the fundamental normative principle underlying financial regulation. Financial stability, however, is insensitive to equality concerns and can produce morally impermissible aggregations in which the least advantaged in a society are made worse off. Solutions based only on financial stability can restrict debt without …

Insolvency Law As Credit Enhancement And Enforcement Mechanism: A Closer Look At Global Modernization Of Secured Transactions Law, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay revisits earlier work on the relationship between insolvency law and secured credit, the role of secured transactions law reforms, and the benefits of secured credit. These complex relationships require a holistic approach toward reforms of secured transactions law and insolvency law. Merely enacting sensible secured transactions laws and insolvency laws may be insufficient to produce the intended benefits from either set of laws.

The essay is informed by an ongoing qualitative empirical study of business credit in Japan—the Japanese Business Credit Project. The JBCP involves interviews of representatives of Japanese financial institutions and governmental bodies and legal practitioners …

The Community Reinvestment Act: Its Impact On Lending In Low-Income Communities In The United States, Michael S. Barr, Lynda Y. De La Vina, Valerie A. Personick, Melissa A. Schroder

Book Chapters

This paper reviews data and research studies that demonstrate that CRA has helped to increase lending to low-income borrowers and in low-income neighborhoods, and that expanded CRA lending has been accomplished while maintaining sound lending practices and bank profitability. The paper also discusses literature that draws alternative conclusions, as well as studies that find, despite increases in lending and banking services to low- and moderate-income areas and to minority borrowers, that disparities still exist between the services afforded to these communities and those offered to the market as a whole.