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Lessons From The Efforts To Manage The Shift Away From Defined Benefit Plans To Defined Contribution Plans In Australia, The United Kingdom, And The United States, Elizabeth F. Brown Jan 2016

Lessons From The Efforts To Manage The Shift Away From Defined Benefit Plans To Defined Contribution Plans In Australia, The United Kingdom, And The United States, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

This is an earlier version of this Article that was published in the 53 American Business Law Journal 315 (Summer 2016). Please see that journal for the final version of this Article. This Article examines what lessons may be learned from examining how Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have tried to manage the shift away from defined benefit plans towards defined contribution plans. This shift has fundamentally changed the relationship between workers and the financial industry. While defined contribution plans provide employees with some advantages over defined benefit plans (e.g., portability, early vesting, greater autonomy), they also …


A Preliminary Look At State Structures For Regulating Financial Services, Elizabeth F. Brown Jan 2014

A Preliminary Look At State Structures For Regulating Financial Services, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

Within the past thirty-five years approximately fifty nations have consolidated their financial regulatory agencies into either a single integrated agency or into two semi-integrated agencies. The United States has resisted this trend, due in part to a concern that the costs of such significant consolidation would exceed its benefits. The existing studies that compare the costs of the consolidated regulators around the world with the United States regime have often been discounted because they have been unable to control for differences in culture and regulatory intensity between those other countries and the United States. This article attempts to address this …


The Development Of International Norms For Insurance Regulation, Elizabeth F. Brown Jan 2009

The Development Of International Norms For Insurance Regulation, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

The development of international norms for insurance has not progressed as far or as deeply as the development of international norms for banking. Several factors have affected this process. First, the efforts to develop such norms are relatively new. The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (“IAIS”) has existed for less than fifteen years while the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has existed for over thirty years. Second, the membership of the IAIS makes it harder for that organization to achieve consensus on principles and standards than for the Basel Committee. The IAIS has members from almost 140 nations, including both …


No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Is There A Need For A Safe Harbor For Aspirational Codes Of Conduct?, Elizabeth F. Brown Jan 2008

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Is There A Need For A Safe Harbor For Aspirational Codes Of Conduct?, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

Over the years, Congress and some state legislatures have enacted laws to encourage corporations to engage in self-policing by providing them with incentives to adopt codes of conduct and compliance programs. In the case of the Federal Organizational Sentencing Guidelines, Congress offered corporations lower penalties if they were found in violation of a federal law but had adopted codes of conduct and compliance programs to try to comply with the law. In the case of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Congress require public corporations to disclose if they had a code of ethic and if not, why not. Congress assumed that the …


The Tyranny Of The Multitude Is A Multiplied Tyranny: Is The United States Financial Regulatory Structure Undermining U.S. Competitiveness?, Elizabeth F. Brown Jan 2008

The Tyranny Of The Multitude Is A Multiplied Tyranny: Is The United States Financial Regulatory Structure Undermining U.S. Competitiveness?, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

This Article examines whether the U.S. regulatory structure undermined U.S. competitiveness with foreign financial markets, particularly the United Kingdom's markets.


Trying To Vote In Good Conscience, Elizabeth F. Brown Dec 2007

Trying To Vote In Good Conscience, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

This Article analyses the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States, and how it addresses the economic and environmental issues raised during the 2008 Presidential election.


The Fatal Flaw Of Proposals To Federalize Insurance Regulation, Elizabeth F. Brown Oct 2007

The Fatal Flaw Of Proposals To Federalize Insurance Regulation, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

While the federal government has had the option of regulating insurance since the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Ass’n, 322 U.S. 533 (1944), the states have retained almost exclusive control over insurance regulation. Within the past seven years, Congress, however, has considered three different methods of federalizing insurance regulation. Some members of the insurance industry see these efforts to federalize insurance regulation as a means of eliminating the problems in the current state system, which they view as costly, cumbersome and confusing. In the Congressional hearings on federalizing insurance, both opponents and …


E Pluribus Unum -- Out Of Many, One: Why The United States Needs A Single Financial Services Agency, Elizabeth F. Brown Jan 2005

E Pluribus Unum -- Out Of Many, One: Why The United States Needs A Single Financial Services Agency, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

The United States needs to consolidate the over 115 existing state and federal agencies that regulate banking, securities and insurance firms and their products and services into a single, federal financial services agency; a U.S. Financial Services Agency (“US FSA”). The US FSA would be able to more effectively regulate the U.S. financial services industry than the existing regulatory regime. The current U.S. financial regulatory regime suffers from a range of problems, including an inability to anticipate and plan for future financial crises, an inability by regulators to quickly adapt to market innovations and developments, inconsistent regulations for financial products …


In Defense Of Environmental Rights In East European Constitutions, Elizabeth F. Brown Jan 1993

In Defense Of Environmental Rights In East European Constitutions, Elizabeth F. Brown

Elizabeth F Brown

This Article analyzes how the environmental rights in East European constitutions could have been drafted to make them enforceable, rather than merely aspirational.