After the 2008 financial crisis, policymakers focused on enacting improvements in two areas of financial regulation: capital and liquidity, affecting the composition of bank assets and the sources of bank funding. These improvements made both the emergence of a crisis less likely and the...

The benefits of cross-border financial activity are wide-ranging, from greater competition and more efficient markets to broader and more stable access to capital. During normal economic times, the official sector and private sector share an incentive to foster such cross-border financial...

This paper summarizes the status of general-purpose central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) within seventeen countries and the Euro Area. This paper also documents the proposed design features and functionalities, if applicable, of each country's proposed or piloted CBDC. This paper finds that...

After a large economic shock, states often transfer a portion of privately held debt to the public balance sheet. The mechanism used for this transfer differs, depending on the nature and cause of the shock—mobilization expenditures, after war breaks out; relief spending, after storms or other...

After the 2008 financial crisis, reforms to financial regulation in the United States developed with an apparent contradiction at their core: While those reforms embraced cooperative international measures, they simultaneously imposed more stringent safeguards on foreign banks opening on...

This chapter examines the impact of private and public enforcement of securities regulation on the development of capital markets. After a review of the literature, it considers empirical findings related to private and public enforcement as measured by formal indices and resources, with...

In the decade-plus following the 2008 global financial crisis, the United States experienced steady economic growth that evolved into the longest expansion in the country's recorded history. It's fair to say that very few people expected a pandemic to end the run. COVID-19 upended life as we...

Cryptocurrencies are all the rage, but there is nothing new about privately produced money. The goal of private money is to be accepted at par with no questions asked. This did not occur during the Free Banking Era in the United States—a period that most resembles the current world of...

Litigation finance refers to investments in litigation by a third person not originally a party to the suit. Whether the country should embrace this new practice has sparked debate among the bar, on the Hill, in the press, and between scholars. We disagree with the premise of this debate;...

Between 2010 and 2014, the regional price of aluminum in the United States (Midwest premium) increased threefold. We argue that the Midwest premium was likely manipulated during this period through the exercise of market power in the aluminum storage market. We first use a...