Regulation and Supervision: An Ethical Perspective / Edward J. Kane.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kane, Edward J.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w13895.

NBER working paper series no. w13895

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Regulation and Supervision

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2008.

Summary:

This essay shows that government credit-allocation schemes generate incentive conflicts that undermine the quality of bank supervision and eventually produce banking crisis. For political reasons, most countries establish a regulatory culture that embraces three economically contradictory elements: politically directed subsidies to selected bank borrowers; subsidized provision of explicit or implicit repayment guarantees for the creditors of banks that participate in the credit-allocation scheme; and defective government monitoring and control of the subsidies to leveraged risk-taking that the other two elements produce. In 2007-2008, technological change and regulatory competition simultaneously encouraged incentive-conflicted supervisors to outsource much of their due discipline to credit-rating firms and encouraged banks to securitize their loans in ways that pushed credit risks on poorly underwritten loans into corners of the universe where supervisors and credit-ratings firms would not see them.

Notes:

Print version record

March 2008.