This paper investigates the relationship between politics and the banking and financial system and explores the implications of this interdependence for understanding regulations and their reforms. Five complementary positive political economy theories are outlined and applied to understand the...

This paper provides a positive political economy analysis of deregulation, focusing on the recent removal of barriers to bank branching. Intra and inter -state branching restrictions had been in place in most states for mor than a century but have largely disappeared during the last 25 years.

We model self-regulation as a means of preempting governemnt regulation when regulatory standards are a function of interest group pressures. A an exemplary case, we focus on corporate environmentalism, i.e. voluntary pollution abatement.