This paper describes how the government has largely ignored economics in its recent attempts to deal with the deterioration of federally insured depository institutions. The most recent example was the Financial Institutions Recovery, Reform, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) of 1989. Well documented...

Enactment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) in November 1999 effectively repealed the long-standing prohibitions on the mixing of banking with securities or insurance businesses and thus permits "broad banking." We attribute repeal of these prohibitions to the increasingly persuasive evidence...

Robert Hahn and Robert Litan defend President Bush's recent executive order on government regulation.

The conventional wisdom is that the surge in productivity growth which has surged in the United States over the past 15 years has been attributed almost wholly to advances in the production and use of information technology. While this is certainly evident from the statistics, a driving force...

Our analysis has important implications for banking regulators and competition authorities around the world that are looking into interchange fees for debit and credit cards. David S. Evans (Univ. of Chicago, UCL), Robert E. Litan (Kaufmann Foundation), & Richard Schmalensee (MIT).