A well-functioning financial sector is essential for economic growth: as long as entrepreneurs and businesses have opportunities that require outside financing, there will be a need for finance. But when [...]
There’s nothing wrong with doing well (or even very well) financially, but when your windfall can be attributed to regressive regulations at the expense of taxpayers and the economy at [...]
1. Why it's so easy to put macroprudential regulation on the back burner (and why that's bad). 2. New research: uneven application of macroprudential regulation doesn't mean it isn't worth [...]
It’s quite easy to ignore the long-run costs of a policy in the short term (just ask anyone that’s been putting off their diet). Policymakers are also textbook hyperbolic discounters, [...]
The rule of law is important in policymaking because it ensures all actors are subject to the same rules. If regulations are applied inconsistently across actors in a regulated industry, [...]
1. Countercyclical capital requirements find friends in high places. 2. New research: how HAMP failed compared to private-sector alternatives. 3. How to improve the Fed's stress tests. 4. The Narrow [...]
After former Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jason Furman made the case for higher countercyclical capital buffers (CCyB) in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, a number of [...]
In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, the Obama Administration implemented the now-defunct Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), first created as a part of the Economic Stabilization Act of [...]
Stress tests are scenarios created by financial regulators (in the U.S. the Federal Reserve) to determine how prepared financial institutions are for a sudden market downturn. The most recent tests [...]
A “narrow bank” is a bank that takes deposits like any other bank, but instead of lending them out to businesses or homebuyers, it invests all of its deposits in [...]