Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation brings fresh insight and analytic rigor to what has become one of the most contested domains of American domestic politics. Critics from the left blame lax regulation for the housing meltdown and financial crisis—not to mention major public health disasters ranging from the Gulf Coast oil spill to the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion. At the same time, critics on the right disparage an excessively strict and costly regulatory system for hampering economic recovery. With such polarized accounts of regulation and its performance, the nation needs now more than ever the kind of dispassionate, rigorous scholarship found in this book. With chapters written by some of the nation's foremost economists, political scientists, and legal scholars, Regulatory Breakdown brings clarity to the heated debate over regulation by dissecting the disparate causes of the current crisis as well as analyzing promising solutions to what ails the U.S. regulatory system. This volume shows policymakers, researchers, and the public why they need to question conventional wisdom about regulation—whether from the left or the right—and demonstrates the value of undertaking systematic analysis before adopting policy reforms in the wake of disaster.

Whether striving to protect citizens from financial risks, climate change, inadequate health care, or the uncertainties of the emerging “sharing” economy, regulators must routinely make difficult judgment calls in an effort to meet the conflicting demands that society places on them. Operating within a political climate of competing demands, regulators need a lodestar to help them define and evaluate success. Achieving Regulatory Excellence provides that direction by offering new insights from law, public administration, political science, sociology, and policy sciences on what regulators need to do to improve their performance. Achieving Regulatory Excellence offers guidance from leading international experts about how regulators can set appropriate priorities and make sound, evidence-based decisions through processes that are transparent and participatory. With increasing demands for smarter but leaner government, the need for sound regulatory capacity—for regulatory excellence—has never been stronger.

Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.

Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience interested in economic policy issues. This Web-only series replaced Staff Position Notes in January 2011.

“This publication could not be more timely. Little more than a decade after the global financial crisis of 2008, governments are once again loosening the reins over financial markets. The authors of this volume explain why that is a mistake and could invite yet another major crisis.” —Benjamin Cohen, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA “Leading political scientists from several generations here offer historical depth, as well as sensible suggestions about what reforms are needed now.” —John Kirton, University of Toronto, Canada, and Co-founder of the G7 Research Group “A valuable antidote to complacency for policy-makers, scholars and students.” —Timothy J. Sinclair, University of Warwick, UK This book examines the long-term, previously underappreciated breakdowns in financial regulation that fed into the 2008 global financial crash. While most related literature focuses on short-term factors such as the housing bubble, low interest rates, the breakdown of credit rating services and the emergence of new financial instruments, the authors of this volume contend that the larger trends in finance which continue today are most relevant to understanding the crash. Their analysis focuses on regulatory capture, moral hazard and the reflexive challenges of regulatory intervention in order to demonstrate that financial regulation suffers from long-standing, unaddressed and fundamental weaknesses.