This comment letter was submitted to the U.S. Treasury Department in connection with that Department's review of proposals for changes in the regulatory structure for financial institutions. The comment letter presents the following policy recommendations: (1) the thrift charter should be...

This paper presents the findings of a survey of 73 remittance firms in 6 U.S. states, where company executives were interviewed in person. The paper finds that the largest obstacles to doing business that remittance firms face are related to obtaining bank accounts, licensing and bond...

Hedge funds and other private equity funds are aggressive monitors of corporate America. Their investment strategies are designed to squeeze agency costs and other inefficiencies out of under performing companies. Mutual funds and public pension funds, by contrast, have remained relentlessly...

Most U.S. public companies have a single class of voting common shares: voting power is proportional to economic ownership. Linking votes to shares is often thought to be desirable, because, as residual claimants, shareholders have an incentive to exercise voting power well. The linkage also...

Modern scholarship on corporate law treats equity-holders, managers and/or directors as the primary levers of corporate governance. In recent years, however, economists and legal scholars have increasingly recognized that creditors often engage in governance as well. Creditors engage in...

This Article contributes a novel idea to the literature on capital market gatekeepers: positive incentive systems for gatekeepers to perform functions not required of them in exchange for rewards if they perform the functions successfully. Capital market gatekeeping theory relies upon the...

The financial crisis of 2008 spurred the failure of numerous bank and nonbank financial entities. Government regulators addressed each of these failures on an ad hoc, ex-post basis, granting multiple bailouts in various forms. The refusal to extend these bailouts to one firm, Lehman Brothers,...

This paper analyzes the impact of remuneration practices on banks' risk-taking in a model with fire sales externalities. When these externalities are not internalized by a bank's shareholders and executives, borrowing and fire sales are higher than the socially optimal level. Our analysis shows...

This note describes some of the most important changes that have occurred in the Colombian financial system over the past decade. It begins with an assessment of the growth of shadow banking, together with an analysis of the main risks that have emerged in the shadow banking sector and a...