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Against Regulatory Displacement: An Institutional Analysis Of Financial Crises, Jonathan C. Lipson
Against Regulatory Displacement: An Institutional Analysis Of Financial Crises, Jonathan C. Lipson
Jonathan C. Lipson
This paper uses “institutional analysis”—the study of the relative capacities of markets, courts, and regulators—to make three claims about financial crises.
First, financial crises are increasingly a problem of “regulatory displacement.” Through the ad hoc rescues of 2008 and the Dodd-Frank reforms of 2010, regulators displace market and judicial processes that ordinarily prevent financial distress from becoming financial crises. Because regulators are vulnerable to capture by large financial services firms, however, they cannot address the pathologies that create crises: market concentration and complexity. Indeed, regulators may inadvertently aggravate these conditions through resolution tactics that consolidate firms, and the volume and …
Epic Fail: An Institutional Analysis Of Financial Distress, Jonathan C. Lipson
Epic Fail: An Institutional Analysis Of Financial Distress, Jonathan C. Lipson
Jonathan C. Lipson
This paper presents an institutional analysis of financial distress. “Institutional analysis” compares the effectiveness of large-scale processes, such as markets, courts, and governments, at solving social problems. Although financial distress is one of our most acute problems, there has been virtually no effort to analyze it from an institutional perspective. This paper begins to fill that gap.
Institutional analysis shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, financial distress is not a problem that courts, such as bankruptcy courts, usually solve by themselves. Instead, it is increasingly a problem that political organs (whether elected or regulatory) both create and purport to resolve. …