Regulatory Cycles: Revisiting the Political Economy of Financial Crises

Regulatory Cycles: Revisiting the Political Economy of Financial Crises

Author: Jihad Dagher

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2018-01-15

Total Pages: 89

ISBN-13: 1484337743

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Financial crises are traditionally analyzed as purely economic phenomena. The political economy of financial booms and busts remains both under-emphasized and limited to isolated episodes. This paper examines the political economy of financial policy during ten of the most infamous financial booms and busts since the 18th century, and presents consistent evidence of pro-cyclical regulatory policies by governments. Financial booms, and risk-taking during these episodes, were often amplified by political regulatory stimuli, credit subsidies, and an increasing light-touch approach to financial supervision. The regulatory backlash that ensues from financial crises can only be understood in the context of the deep political ramifications of these crises. Post-crisis regulations do not always survive the following boom. The interplay between politics and financial policy over these cycles deserves further attention. History suggests that politics can be the undoing of macro-prudential regulations.


The Failure of Financial Regulation

The Failure of Financial Regulation

Author: Anil Hira

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-04-16

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 3030056805

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“This publication could not be more timely. Little more than a decade after the global financial crisis of 2008, governments are once again loosening the reins over financial markets. The authors of this volume explain why that is a mistake and could invite yet another major crisis.” —Benjamin Cohen, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA “Leading political scientists from several generations here offer historical depth, as well as sensible suggestions about what reforms are needed now.” —John Kirton, University of Toronto, Canada, and Co-founder of the G7 Research Group “A valuable antidote to complacency for policy-makers, scholars and students.” —Timothy J. Sinclair, University of Warwick, UK This book examines the long-term, previously underappreciated breakdowns in financial regulation that fed into the 2008 global financial crash. While most related literature focuses on short-term factors such as the housing bubble, low interest rates, the breakdown of credit rating services and the emergence of new financial instruments, the authors of this volume contend that the larger trends in finance which continue today are most relevant to understanding the crash. Their analysis focuses on regulatory capture, moral hazard and the reflexive challenges of regulatory intervention in order to demonstrate that financial regulation suffers from long-standing, unaddressed and fundamental weaknesses.


Regulatory Cycles: Revisiting the Political Economy of Financial Crises

Regulatory Cycles: Revisiting the Political Economy of Financial Crises

Author: Jihad Dagher

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2018-01-15

Total Pages: 89

ISBN-13: 1484337786

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Financial crises are traditionally analyzed as purely economic phenomena. The political economy of financial booms and busts remains both under-emphasized and limited to isolated episodes. This paper examines the political economy of financial policy during ten of the most infamous financial booms and busts since the 18th century, and presents consistent evidence of pro-cyclical regulatory policies by governments. Financial booms, and risk-taking during these episodes, were often amplified by political regulatory stimuli, credit subsidies, and an increasing light-touch approach to financial supervision. The regulatory backlash that ensues from financial crises can only be understood in the context of the deep political ramifications of these crises. Post-crisis regulations do not always survive the following boom. The interplay between politics and financial policy over these cycles deserves further attention. History suggests that politics can be the undoing of macro-prudential regulations.


Regulatory Cycles

Regulatory Cycles

Author: Pooya Almasi

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 41

ISBN-13:

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Financial regulatory policy in the U.S. has been conspicuously pro-cyclical over the last two decades. The 2000s financial boom coincided with a period of financial deregulation and the post-crisis response, a massive scaling up of regulation, was largely implemented during an economic downturn. Many argued that these regulatory waves were excessive. More recently, there are strong signs of a move toward deregulation, at a time of a booming economy and stock market. A closer look at historical financial boom-bust cycles suggests that, in fact, pro-cyclicality in financial regulation is a common and recurring pattern. This paper combines a signaling model of elections with a simple financial regulation model to study how public opinion, financial innovation, and policy-makers incentives shape financial regulation. While changes in voters' perceptions of financial innovation alone can generate a pro-cyclical pattern, we show that this cyclicality can be significantly amplified by politicians' electoral incentives: Both over-regulation and under-regulation can naturally arise in equilibrium, and small changes in public opinion can induce large regulatory shifts.


After the Crash

After the Crash

Author: Sharyn O'Halloran

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 0231549997

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The 2008 crash was the worst financial crisis and the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. It triggered a complete overhaul of the global regulatory environment, ushering in a stream of new rules and laws to combat the perceived weakness of the financial system. While the global economy came back from the brink, the continuing effects of the crisis include increasing economic inequality and political polarization. After the Crash is an innovative analysis of the crisis and its ongoing influence on the global regulatory, financial, and political landscape, with timely discussions of the key issues for our economic future. It brings together a range of experts and practitioners, including Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner; former congressman Barney Frank; former treasury secretary Jacob Lew; Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England; and Steve Cutler, general counsel of JP Morgan Chase during the financial crisis. Each poses crucial questions: What were the origins of the crisis? How effective were international and domestic regulatory responses? Have we addressed the roots of the crisis through reform and regulation? Are our financial systems and the global economy better able to withstand another crash? After the Crash is vital reading as both a retrospective on the last crisis and an analysis of possible sources of the next one.


Great Expectations, Slow Transformation

Great Expectations, Slow Transformation

Author: Manuela Moschella

Publisher: ECPR Press

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1910259292

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n the aftermath of the financial crisis, why has the reform process been incremental yet the conditions for more rapid and abrupt transformations appeared to be available? Is there anything specific about financial policy that prevents more radical reforms? Drawing from Comparative Politics and Historical Institutionalism in particular, as well as International Political Economy, this book answers these questions by examining the particular institutional frictions that characterise global financial governance and influence the activity of change agents and veto players involved in the process of global regulatory change. The chapters in this volume collectively demonstrate that the process of change in financial rule-making as well as in the institutions governing finance does not fit with the punctuated model of policy change. The book also shows, however, that incremental changes can lead to fundamental shifts in the basic principles that inform global financial governance.


Regulation and the Global Financial Crisis

Regulation and the Global Financial Crisis

Author: Daniel Cash

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-24

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0429578644

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The Financial Crisis was a cross-sector crisis that fundamentally affected modern society. Regulation, as a concept, was both blamed for allowing the crisis to happen, but also tasked with developing and implementing solutions in the wake of the crash. In this book, a number of specialists from a range of fields have contributed their insights into the effect of the Financial Crisis upon the regulatory frameworks affecting their fields, how regulators have responded to the Crisis, and then what this may mean for the future of regulation within those industries. These analyses are joined by a picture of past financial crises – which reveals interesting patterns – and then analyses of architectural regulatory models that were fundamentally affected by the Crisis. The book aims to allow sector specialists the freedom to share their insights so that, potentially, a broader picture can be identified. Providing an interesting and thought-provoking account of this societally impactful era, this book will help the reader develop a more informed understanding of the potential future of financial regulation. The book will be of value to researchers, students, advanced level students, regulators, and policymakers.


The Regulatory Responses to the Global Financial Crisis

The Regulatory Responses to the Global Financial Crisis

Author: Mr.Stijn Claessens

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2014-03-14

Total Pages: 39

ISBN-13: 148433597X

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We identify current challenges for creating stable, yet efficient financial systems using lessons from recent and past crises. Reforms need to start from three tenets: adopting a system-wide perspective explicitly aimed at addressing market failures; understanding and incorporating into regulations agents’ incentives so as to align them better with societies’ goals; and acknowledging that risks of crises will always remain, in part due to (unknown) unknowns – be they tipping points, fault lines, or spillovers. Corresponding to these three tenets, specific areas for further reforms are identified. Policy makers need to resist, however, fine-tuning regulations: a “do not harm” approach is often preferable. And as risks will remain, crisis management needs to be made an integral part of system design, not relegated to improvisation after the fact.


Redefining the Market-State Relationship

Redefining the Market-State Relationship

Author: Ioannis Glinavos

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1136014721

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This book offers an interdisciplinary overview of the role of law in modern capitalism in the context of financial crisis. In this work, the reader will find a discussion of key issues relevant to the crisis that have occupied the pages of the financial press since 2007 including an assessment of the meltdown of the sub-prime mortgage market, the credit crunch, the European debt crisis and the turmoil in Greece, plus a series of theoretical contributions that are aimed to challenge perceptions of the market-state relationship and the place of law within it. The book includes a methodological defence of the state-market dichotomy, a critique of the tenets of neoclassical economics, and an evaluation of what the financial crisis heralds for the future of the political economy of western democracies. Ioannis Glinavos argues that it is a mistake to associate markets with freedom and states with oppression, and suggests that more choice for consumers can -and does- mean less choice for citizens. The book suggests that a new social contract is needed to ensure the survival of both capitalism and democracy. In contributing a unique, legal perspective to the underlying dynamics of the financial crisis, this book will be valuable to scholars and students of regulation, financial markets and economic development.


The Regulatory Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis

The Regulatory Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis

Author: Eilís Ferran

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-11-15

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1139851780

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The EU and the US responded to the global financial crisis by changing the rules for the functioning of financial services and markets and by establishing new oversight bodies. With the US Dodd–Frank Act and numerous EU regulations and directives now in place, this book provides a timely and thoughtful explanation of the key elements of the new regimes in both regions, of the political processes which shaped their content and of their practical impact. Insights from areas such as economics, political science and financial history elucidate the significance of the reforms. Australia's resilience during the financial crisis, which contrasted sharply with the severe problems that were experienced in the EU and the US, is also examined. The comparison between the performances of these major economies in a period of such extreme stress tells us much about the complex regulatory and economic ecosystems of which financial markets are a part.