Law Commons^™

¬Reverse Regulatory Arbitrage: An Auction Approach To Regulatory Assignments, Todd Henderson, Fred Tung

Todd Henderson

In the years before the Financial Crisis, banks got to pick their regulators, engaging in a form of regulatory arbitrage that we now know was a race to the bottom. We propose to turn the tables on the banks by allowing regulators, specifically, bank examiners, to choose the banks they regulate. We call this “reverse regulatory arbitrage,” and we think it can help improve regulatory outcomes. Building on our prior work that proposes to pay bank examiners for performance—by giving them financial incentives to avoid bank failures—we argue that bank supervisory assignments should be set through an auction among examiners. …

The Nanny Corporation And The Market For Altruism, Todd Henderson

Todd Henderson

Individuals in common pools-employees in firms, shareholders in firms, individuals in insurance plans, and citizens in a jurisdiction-want the managers of those common pools to act paternalistically toward other individuals, because this lowers the costs of being in the pool. The nanny state, which bans smoking in public places and imposes innumerable sin taxes, and the nanny corporation, which is starting to force employees to be more healthy, are simply responding to this demand. These two can thought of as competing in the "market for paternalism" to deliver paternalism to individuals that demand it.

Where nannyism is inevitable, as it …