In the 1920s and 1930s, many public utilities in the United States were controlled by holding companies organized in pyramid form. This structure can add value to subsidiaries but can also facilitate extraction of wealth from the subsidiaries' public shareholders. I examine the effects of the...

Over the past half century, the SEC's regulations have become key determinants of the way in which stocks trade and the fees that exchanges charge for their services. The current equity market structure rules are contained primarily in the SEC's Regulation NMS. The theory behind Regulation NMS...

Both the Great Depression and the Great Recession followed systemic banking crises and preceded unusually weak and slow recoveries. The prior literature has identified monetary, household demand, and credit effects as contributors to the severe and prolonged downturns. This paper studies a...

Many popular and academic commentators identify deregulation as a cause of the 2007-08 financial crisis. Some argue that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLBA) and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA) removed barriers to risk-taking by commercial and investment banks, while...

The U.S. equity markets have undergone profound changes since the late 20th century. Electronic order books have almost entirely replaced manual floor- and telephone-based trading. New trading venues and order types have proliferated. Technology made these developments possible, but regulation...