Sky Blog
Blockchain-based platforms create exciting possibilities for financial inclusion: widespread ownership of deposit accounts and access to payments services. From a macro-level perspective, however, these platforms can aggravate systemic risks. Systemic instability, in turn, threatens financial inclusion and sustainability.
Sustainable finance, …
In our recent paper, we conducted an empirical analysis to test how the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic affected the market for cryptocurrencies (“cryptomarket”). One year into the pandemic, this market seems to have boomed. For instance, when the pandemic …
In a new article, I examine the development and regulation of digital currencies, which are monetary currencies that are evidenced electronically. Large “wholesale” payments among businesses and financial institutions already occur electronically, and bitcoin has been with us for …
On Wednesday, March 10, after engaging in conversations with stakeholders, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration issued an enforcement policy statement in which it declined to enforce two DOL rules put in place by the Trump administration …
In the second half of 2020, demand for ESG-focused investments continued to accelerate, and data showing the outperformance of those investments during the COVID-19 pandemic has set the stage for robust demand to continue in 2021. In his recent letter …
A growing number of financial institutions, from BlackRock to the Bank of England, have reached the conclusion that markets are not accurately assessing climate change-related risks. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde recently warned that central bankers “will have to …
Why are venture capitalists the winners in the startup funding game? VCs have funded most of the big-name startups that now dominate the NASDAQ and, in a sense, have been the only game in town for high-growth startups needing millions …
In a new paper, we explain that variation in prospective liquidity in an industry or economy prompts changes in corporate lending and banking, including changes in the level of corporate borrowing, the type of debt contracts issued, the covenants contained …
The transactional plumbing of corporate debt payment systems is hardly where one expects to find watershed legal moments; and it usually lives up to that mundane reputation. But every so often, real disputes emerge, and they are often doozies. Such …
The Dodd-Frank Act, enacted in 2010 in the wake of the Great Recession, introduced mandatory stress-testing for the largest U.S. banks. Dodd-Frank Act Stress Testing (DFAST) was intended to ensure that banks have sufficient capitalization to absorb the losses they …
The pandemic has blown huge holes in most state budgets. Now, with the advent of the Biden Administration and a Democratic Congress, there is a reasonable chance that substantial federal aid is coming – finally.
Given this turn of …
Section 1061 of the Internal Revenue Code was enacted as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to create greater parity between the tax treatment of ordinary income and capital gains attributable to carried interest. The basic statutory …
Research in finance and accounting consistently documents that a significant number of managers overstate reported earnings when true earnings miss a benchmark [1]. Managers face strong incentives to meet and beat important earnings thresholds, such as the analyst consensus forecast …
Here’s a familiar story for litigators. A client calls you with a strong legal claim, but she can’t afford to pay your hourly rates. And your firm won’t let you take the case on contingency. You feel hard-pressed to tell …
On January 13, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case, AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC, that could substantially curtail the primary authority the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) relies on to seek monetary relief from defendants in federal court. …
Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and other foreign banks played an outsized role in the 2008 financial crisis that cost U.S. households trillions of dollars of wealth. As credit markets froze, foreign banks’ U.S. offices experienced extreme stress and …
In the United States, President Trump has struggled to decide whether Jay Powell or China’s Chairman Xi is the greater enemy to the U.S. In Turkey, President Erdogan concluded that “interest rates are the mother of all evil,” switched out …
The COVID-19 outbreak provides fertile ground for sweeping regulatory changes. On May 19, 2020, for example, President Trump issued “Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery Executive Order 13924”, which prompted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and Department …
The hype over technology-enabled disintermediation of financial services, commonly known as fintech, seems at a peak. Though fintech firms promise to increase competition in the financial industry, it is unclear how much the various forms of fintech, including those working …
In the weeks leading up to Ant Financial’s ill-fated IPO, Jack Ma criticized the system of international banking regulation in remarks at the Bund Summit in Shanghai. The Alibaba co-founder contended that the current framework was a poor match for …