As the financial crisis has shown, neither traditional market failure models nor public choice theory, by themselves, sufficiently inform or explain our current regulatory challenges, nor point us toward the best solutions. Regulatory studies, long neglected in an atmosphere focused on deregulatory work, are in critical need of new models and theories that can guide effective policymaking.
Arising out of conversations begun at the April 2009 Government & Markets conference, Tom Baker (University of Pennsylvania Law School) and Annelise Riles (Cornell University, Law and Anthropology), held a Tobin-supported workshop at University of Pennsylva
The Tobin Project held an event in Washington, D.C. at Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro's (D-CT) home to introduce New Perspectives on Regulation to over two dozen members of Congress. Chapter authors Edward Balleisen (Duke University, History), Michael Barr (Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions, Dept.
On July 23, a group of scholars met at the Tobin Project to discuss the intersections of economics and values and to begin forming a research agenda on the relationship between norms, markets, and political economy. Participants include John Geanakoplos (Yale University, Economics), David Grewal (Harvard Society of Fellows, Government), David Laibson (Harvard University, Economics), Sabeel Rahman (Harvard University, Ph.D.
The Tobin Project held a briefing in Washington, D.C. for Senate staff, introducing New Perspectives on Regulation and the work and mission of the Tobin Project more generally. Participants included staff members from several Senators' offices as well as staffers from the Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
New regulation shouldn't rely on old ideas. Since the 1960s, influential research on government failure helped to drive the movement for deregulation and privatization. Yet even as this branch of research was flourishing, very different ideas were sprouting in the social sciences with profound implications for our understanding of human behavior and the role of government. Some of these ideas, particularly from the field of behavioral economics, have begun to enter into discussions of regulatory purpose, design, and implementation.
In May, the Tobin Project asked five scholar-experts from varying diciplines to respond to Elizabeth Warren's (Harvard Law School) proposal for a Financial Product Safety Commission (FPSC), which has been introduced in Congress.
Today’s doctoral students will shape the intellectual paradigms that influence our public policy in the future. Yet this larger project can be obscured by career concerns and an attendant need to not stray too far from a discipline’s intellectual orthodoxies.
America faces the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the heart of this economic turmoil has been debate about the role of regulation and deregulation both in precipitating the crisis and finding possible remedies. Given the sheer scale of federal assets now entrenched in troubled corporations, and the new administration’s ambitious reform objectives, we need more than ever a long-term reevaluation of the relationships between the market and the state.
The Financial Product Safety Commission Act of 2009 has been introduced by Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA) in the House and by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) in the Senate. The bills urge Congress to create a government body that would track and regulate consumer financial products, ideas derived directly from Elizabeth Warren’s (Harvard Law School) research and proposals.