Law Commons^™

Are Financial Institutions Optimally Utilizing Their Aml Compliance Expenditures?, William Byrnes

William H. Byrnes

No abstract provided.

Behavioral Public Finance, Edward J. Mccaffery

Edward J McCaffery

These are slides from a presentation to the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research, Squaw Valley Conference, May, 2008 (at which event Michael Jensen got me to agree to post these slides as a pdf on SSRN . . . ). The task is to give an overview of what I hope to be an emerging field of behavioral public finance. Behavioral finance, as per Barberis and Thaler 2003 (and others), consists of two parts: (1) individual level heuristics and biases, which can lead to sub-optimal (inconsistent) judgment and decision-making, and (2) institutional arbitrage mechanisms. In private finance and …

Comments On Liebman And Zeckhauser, Simple Humans, Complex Insurance, Subtle Subsidies, Edward J. Mccaffery

Edward J McCaffery

These are brief comments on an excellent paper by Jeffrey Liebman and Richard Zeckhauser, prepared for a conference sponsored by the Urban Institute and Brookings on tax and health care policy. Liebman and Zeckhauser summarize the complexities involved in making optimal health insurance decisions, and offer generally cautionary notes about conflating these with tax law (a theme of the conference). Most importantly, Liebman and Zeckhauser suggest a positive role for employers in health care and insurance decisions, as better setters or framers of choice sets—witness 401(k) plans. In this Commentary, I applaud Leibman and Zeckhauser’s general work and particular observation, …

The Petrochina Syndrome: Regulating Capital Markets In The Anti-Globalization Era, Stephen F. Diamond

Stephen F. Diamond

This article argues that the process of globalization has generated a legitimation deficit that can be the source of wasteful, even destructive, social and political conflict. I stylize this outcome as "the PetroChina Syndrome," after a leading example of the kind of activity generated in response to globalization, the PetroChina Campaign, where a coalition of labor, human rights, environmental, anti-slavery and religious groups worked together to oppose the initial public offering of a major Chinese oil company led by Goldman Sachs. The article begins with a discussion of this important but largely unexplored dimension of the anti-globalization era triggered by …

From Credit Denial To Predatory Lending: The Challenge Of Sustaining Minority Homeownership

Patricia A. McCoy

Years of discriminatory behavior against minority households have damaged their ability to build wealth. One of the most financially destructive practices endured by minority households is the excessive overpayment to finance a home purchase or access accumulated equity in a home. The market conditions that position blacks, and to a lesser extent, Latino households, to be the principal targets of predatory mortgage lending have their roots in decades of legally sanctioned housing market discrimination. Some minority households lack the financial knowledge or awareness to protect themselves. In other cases, years of discriminatory financial practices have contributed to rendering them ineligible …

Accounting For Mortgages And Mortgage Backed Securities, Christian Johnson, Luis Betancourt, Sharon Nowakowski

Christian A. Johnson

The Central Bank’S Role In The Payment System: Legal And Policy Aspects, Christian Johnson, Robert Steigerwald

Christian A. Johnson

Assessing A Decade Of Interstate Bank Branching, Christian Johnson, Tara Rice

Christian A. Johnson

The Impact Of Predatory Lending Laws: Policy Implications And Insights

Patricia A. McCoy

Over half the states and several localities have enacted statutes and ordinances to regulate abuses in the residential mortgage market. The effect of these statutes is a matter of debate. This paper seeks to improve the understanding of this increasingly important issue and pays particular attention to the role that legal enforcement mechanisms play in this context.

We created a legal index of laws governing mortgage lending terms and practices, giving each state an overall score for the strength of its laws. In addition, we disaggregated the index to create sub-indices along three dimensions: (1) the scope of loans covered …

The Moral Hazard Implications Of Deposit Insurance: Theory And Practice

Patricia A. McCoy

No abstract provided.

The Legal Infrastructure Of Subprime And Nontraditional Mortgage Lending

Patricia A. McCoy

This paper provides a critical analysis of the legal landscape of residential mortgage lending and explains how federal law abdicated regulation of the subprime market. First, the paper presents the historical backdrop to government oversight of mortgage lending and identifies the changes to and innovations in the lending process that contributed to the recent transformation of the residential mortgage market. We then describe recent attempts at the state and federal level to re-regulate and the backlash initiated by the federal banking agencies to thwart regulation of their constituent banks through preemption, resulting in parallel universes of regulation. Next, the article …

Deconstructing Equity: Public Ownership, Agency Costs, And Complete Capital Markets, Ronald J. Gilson, Charles K. Whitehead

Charles K Whitehead

La "Portabilità Del Mutuo" Bancario O Finanziario, Pietro Sirena

Pietro Sirena

No abstract provided.

“La Nueva Directiva Sobre El Crédito Al Consumo O El Discreto Encanto De Una Armonización Total (Con Muchas Excepciones)”, Luis González Vaqué

Luis González Vaqué

En los considerandos segundo y tercero de la Directiva objeto de nuestro estudio se hace referencia a los resultados insatisfactorios de la armonización mínima consagrada por la Directiva 87/102/CEE. En este sentido, el legislador comunitario, refiriéndose a las divergencias legislativas detectadas, declara lo siguiente:

«La situación de hecho y de derecho resultante de estas disparidades nacionales produce en algunos casos distorsiones de la competencia entre prestamistas dentro de la Comunidad y entorpece el funcionamiento del mercado interior cuando las disposiciones obligatorias adoptadas por los Estados miembros son más restrictivas que las establecidas en la Directiva 87/102/CEE. Asimismo, reduce las posibilidades …

Mutual Funds, Hedge Funds, And The Public-Private Dichotomy In A Macrosociological Framework For Law, Larry D. Barnett

Larry D Barnett

Macrosociology considers law to be one of the institutions of society and, hence, a fundamental component of a social system. Four macrosociological propositions underlie the instant paper: (i) the institutions comprising a social system are, in the long term, compatible with one another; (ii) the compatibility of institutions involves, inter alia, concepts that are similar or identical across at least some institutions; (iii) the concepts and doctrines of the institution of law manifest the properties, including the central values, of the social system; and (iv) the properties of the social system are fashioned by system-level forces. Because the propositions are …