Columbia Law School
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Finance & Economics
Should Lex Americana be universal? FATCA turns foreign banks into tax informants
Over the last decades, a number of initiatives taken by various US administrations on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about the actual legality of the extraterritoriality attached to laws imposed by the United States of America on …
Should Municipal Bond Issuers be Required to Disclose Bank Loans?
You may be surprised to learn that municipal bond issuers are not required to disclose bank borrowings. I’ve heard numerous estimates that such issuers have outstanding bank borrowings in the $200 to $300 billion range, which would amount to approximately
The Separation of Investments and Management
This post comes to us from Professor John Morley, who is currently an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He will be joining the Yale Law School faculty as an associate professor this July. …
Sullivan & Cromwell discusses the Basel Intraday Liquidity Framework
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (the “Basel Committee”), in consultation with the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems, recently published a final document concerning supervisory monitoring tools for intraday liquidity management (the “Intraday Liquidity Document”).
The Intraday Liquidity Document …
Gibson Dunn discusses the Fed’s Foreign Banking Organization Proposal: Will Comments on the Intermediate Holding Company Requirement Be Heeded?
The comment period has now closed on the controversial proposed rule (FBO Proposal) of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board) implementing Sections 165 and 166 of the Dodd-Frank Act (Dodd-Frank) for foreign banking organizations (FBOs) and …
Irredeemably Inefficient Acts: A Threat to Markets, Firms, and the Fisc
My forthcoming article, Irredeemably Inefficient Acts: A Threat to Markets, Firms, and the Fisc, identifies a category of acts that clearly and inevitably reduce social welfare. These acts—which I call irredeemably inefficient—have not been expressly recognized in previous …
Information Transmission between Financial Markets in Chicago and New York
High frequency trading has led to widespread eff orts to reduce information propagation delays between physically distant exchanges. In my recent paper Information Transmission between Financial Markets in Chicago and New York, co-authored with Gregory Laughlin and Anthony Aguirre …
Warren Buffett v. Modern Finance Theory
Experienced readers of Warren Buffett’s letters to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. have gained an enormously valuable informal education. The central theme uniting Buffett’s lucid essays is that the principles of fundamental business analysis, first formulated by his teachers …
Deterring Libor Manipulation and Improving Benchmarks
It’s tempting to think that we might be seeing the end of potential manipulation of financial benchmarks and rates, such as Libor.
The story would go like this: the Libor rate was an anomaly – humorous in retrospect – that …
Cyprus: what happened to the sanctity of insured deposits?
In the turmoil created by the decision of the Cyprus Government to impose a 6.75% levy on deposits up to 100,000 euros and 9% above, it might be useful to look at the legal aspects of this decision. The issue …
Money Market Fund Reform: Endorsement of the Minimum Balance at Risk Proposal
On February 28, I submitted a letter on Money Market Fund Reform to the Financial Stability Oversight Council in response to their November 2012 request for comments on a number of alternative proposals. I endorse the so-called “Minimum Balance at …
Call for Working Papers in Finance, Economics, Accounting, Law, and Business
On June 7, 2013, CalPERS is hosting its inaugural Sustainability & Finance Symposium in Davis, California. The event is co-chaired by Professor Robert J. Jackson, Jr. of Columbia Law School on behalf of the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global …
Market Discipline: The Next Generation
My forthcoming article, Interbank Discipline, draws attention to the important role that banks play monitoring and disciplining other banks. To understand the significance of interbank discipline, the Article proposes a new way of thinking about market discipline more generally. …
The Custom-to-Failure Cycle
The article, The Custom-to-Failure Cycle, which I wrote with my research assistant Lucy Chang (Duke Law School class of 2012), examines how reliance on heuristic-based customs can lead to financial failures. In areas of complexity, people often rely on …
A Comparative Analysis of Shadow Banking Reforms by the FSB, USA and EU
The year 2013 is likely to be a watershed time in the development of shadow banking oversight and regulation. Of particular note are three upcoming developments: (1) the Financial Stability Board (the FSB) has commenced public consultations on its initial …
Implications for the CFPB After the D.C. Circuit’s Recess Appointments Decision
A panel of three judges in the D.C. Circuit stunned Washington on Friday by striking down President Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB in Noel Canning v. NLRB on a basis much more sweeping than had been anticipated. The two …
Re-energizing the IPO Market
In the policy-oriented paper, “Re-energizing the IPO Market,”which will be published in the 2013 Brookings Press book Restructuring to Speed Economic Recovery, I summarize results from a number of my related co-authored papers and address why IPO …
Professor Robert J. Jackson Jr. Moderates Debate on Financial Innovation
Columbia Law School Professor Robert J. Jackson Jr. recently moderated a lively debate on financial innovation before a panel of experts including Congressman Barney Frank, The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin, Nobel Laureate Robert Solow, and Gary Gensler, chairman …
Towards a Legal Theory of Finance
The paper, Towards a Legal Theory of Finance, develops the building blocks for a legal theory of finance (LTF). By placing law at the center of the analysis of financial systems LTF sheds light on the construction of financial …