The Structure And Regulation Of Financial Markets

Aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students in economics, banking, and finance, this is a core textbook for the financial markets, institutions, and regulation option of courses in financial economics. It integrates modern theories of asymmetric information into the analysis of financial institutions, relating the theory to current developments. The text begins with an analysis of adverse selection in retail financial products like life assurance before looking at open capital markets where trades and prices provide information. It then progresses to the more complex areas of corporate governance and financial intermediation in which information is concealed or confidential and moral hazard and verification problems become important. These chapters study the various mechanisms that the financial markets have developed to allow investors to delegate the management of their assets to others. This analysis is used to show how regulation can reduce the risk of financial failure and how legal, accounting, and regulatory mechanisms can help shape a country's corporate and financial architecture. These difficult theoretical concepts are conveyed through the careful use of numerical illustrations and topical case studies. Each chapter ends with a set of exercises to test and reinforce students' comprehension of the material. Worked solutions are provided for the numerical exercises.

What role should regulation play in financial markets? What have been the ramifications of financial regulation? To answer these and other questions regarding the efficacy of legislation on financial markets, this book examines the impact of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), also called the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, which fundamentally changed the financial landscape in the United States. The GLBA allows the formation of financial holding companies that can offer an integrated set of commercial banking, securities and insurance products. The tenth anniversary of the most sweeping financial legislation reform in the industry’s structure is a natural benchmark for assessing the effects of the law and for questioning whether changes are necessary in the working of this historic legislation. The importance of this review is reinforced by a variety of proposals in the last several years to reform the regulation of financial institutions that have attracted considerable attention among regulators and in the financial firms that they regulate. Most recently, the financial crisis and the failure of some large financial institutions have called into question the legitimacy of America’s current financial structure and its regulation, including to some degree the GLBA. There is no doubt that regulatory reform is front and center on today’s policy agenda. The lessons of the GLBA experience and its effects, both domestic and international, on financial markets and competitiveness, risk-taking and risk management by financial services firms and their regulators will be critical to the direction the country takes and the effort to ensure that future financial crises do not occur or have less costly damage. With contributions from academics, policy experts, and a sponsor of the GLBA, Congressman James Leach, this book is invaluable to anyone interested in financial system reform.

Financial markets in Britain, and elsewhere, are in the midst of a process of fundamental structural change. The resulting shifts in the behaviour of such markets will require the authorities, in turn, to revise their regulatory and control methods. This book incorporates a series of articles by leading British monetary economists to examine both the implications of such structural changes and also to model the current working of these markets. Within this unified framework, the articles range from descriptive accounts of recent developments in bank supervision and in the structure of the London capital markets to more formal econometric studies of the inter-relationships between money and other economic variables, and of the workings of financial markets. This provides a showcase to exhibit the most up-to-date research of leading British monetary economists.

"In the wake of the global financial crisis that began in 2008, offers a systematic overview of recent developments in regulatory frameworks in advanced and emerging-market countries, outlining challenges to improving regulation, markets, and access in developing economies"--Provided by publisher.

Dramatic changes in information and telecommunications technologies have transformed U.S. financial markets in the 1980s and 1990s. This book examines the growth of mutual funds and derivatives markets and the decline of banks and explores implications of those developments for financial stability and regulatory policy. One of the book's central conclusions is that the current system of bank regulation is out of step with today's financial realities and needs to be substantially changed. Franklin Edwards asserts that the best way to increase the freedom of financial institutions to compete while making the financial system less vulnerable to excessive risk-taking by individual financial institutions is to adopt a system of collateralized banking. He shows how adopting such a system will result in a more stable financial system, both by reducing our reliance on government to maintain financial soundness and by enhancing the effectiveness of private markets in controlling institutional risk taking.

This book examines the area of financial regulation in the banking sector. Editors Mayes and Wood bring together such acadmics as Charles Goodhart, Charles Calomiris and Kern Alexander whose expertise shines through this volume to provide a reference tool for researchers, students and bankers themselves which will prove invaluable.

Analytical background -- Nature of systemic risk -- Who should be regulated (by whom) -- Counter-cyclical regulation -- Regulation of liquidity and maturity mismatches -- Other regulatory issues -- The structure of regulation -- Conclusions -- Appendix : the boundary problem in financial regulation -- Discussion and roundtables.