Securities law has long regulated speech with little (if any) First Amendment controversy. Yet the contemporary antiregulatory turn in the Supreme Court’s Free Speech Clause doctrine has inspired increasingly successful efforts to resist regulation in various settings—settings that now include securities law. Among other things, the Court now scrutinizes the government’s compelled informational disclosures with… Read More »
What is a fair price for an insurance policy? Standard actuarial thinking suggests that a fair price is the one that most closely reflects the risk (expected costs) of that policy. This type of actuarial fairness ensures that, within an insurance portfolio, the premiums collected from homogenous groups of policyholders will, on average, match the… Read More »
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) represents a growing set of financial services that attempt to replicate key functions of the conventional financial system in an open and decentralized way using blockchain technology. This emerging form of capital markets has become economically meaningful; the Federal Reserve estimated the total value of digital contracts locked in DeFi applications exceeded… Read More »
Markets built on public, permissionless blockchains like Ethereum are radically transparent. While pending transactions in traditional finance are considered private information, viewable only by brokers or corporate insiders, transactions submitted to Ethereum’s public mempool—where they wait to be included on the blockchain—are publicly known. This creates profit opportunities and trading strategies that are rarely, if… Read More »
There is an urgent need to mobilize global capital for climate action, particularly in emerging markets. Songwe, Stern, and Bhattacharya (2022) estimate that developing countries, excluding China, will need to spend approximately $1 trillion per year by 2025 and around $2.4 trillion per year by 2030 on sustainability and transition-related investments. To meet China’s carbon… Read More »
In a new study, we investigate the relationship between executives who exploit their position in the firm to reduce their tax liabilities (i.e., “personally tax aggressive” executives) and corporate violations across various activities, including workplace safety and environmental regulations. Specifically, we examine executives who consistently gift corporate stock at or near the maximum of the… Read More »
Crypto assets and crypto-related financial activities are generating considerable discourse among global regulators and financial supervisors. As key actors in the emerging alternative finance ecosystems, crypto and its market actors have drawn increasing attention to their potential policy implications, particularly on financial integrity, consumer protection and financial stability. This is primarily because crypto ecosystems remain… Read More »
At its core, the economy’s essential role is to allocate resources toward the most productive investment prospects. Traditionally, stock markets have been particularly efficient at allocating capital to firms with the most promising investment projects. In recent times, however, private equity (PE) markets have experienced significant expansion and have provided more capital through private than… Read More »
In August 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a landmark piece of legislation designed primarily to help the United States decarbonize while reviving domestic manufacturing. One of the most important novel programs in the IRA is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF. The GGRF is a $27 billion pool of grant… Read More »
Since the inception of Bitcoin in 2008, crypto assets, have long been perceived as one of the riskiest assets.1 Unlike traditional assets, many cryptocurrencies are decentralized, limited in supply, and difficult to value, leading to speculation, high divergence of opinion, and extreme price volatility. These features, combined with the rapid growth of crypto markets during… Read More »
