IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uta/papers/2016_01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Political Economy of Financial Deregulation

Author

Listed:
  • Korkut Erturk

Abstract

Drawing broadly on the literature on the political economy of the financial crisis, the paper looks at deregulation as a market driven process that culminated in a collective action failure. In the run up to the 2008 Financial Crisis strong competition and moral hazard went hand in hand and that raises a flag that needs explanation. The paper argues that opportunistic profit (rent) seeking was more the cause rather than the effect of moral hazard and regulation failure. Deregulation promised higher profitability partly because of better risk management made possible by advances in information technology and partly because financial institutions could take tail-risks the full cost of which they did not have to bear. The profits deregulation promised in turn incentivized financial firms to invest in tilting the political process to shape government policy. Because systemic risk cannot be fully privatized social insurance against it is inevitably a common pool (or open) resource, which means that there is an incentive for financial units to over-extract in the form of excessive risk taking in the absence of effective regulation. That explains why with deregulation market competition could culminate in excessive risk taking with mounting social costs. Using simple game theory the paper gives a stylized account of what sustained the deregulatory trend. In the course of deregulation, the regulators implicit threat of imposing discipline on financial institutions lost much of its credibility. That, combined with growing plutocracy go a long way in explaining why deregulation became a run-away market driven process that worsened the problem of moral hazard over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Korkut Erturk, 2016. "On the Political Economy of Financial Deregulation," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2016_01, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:uta:papers:2016_01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ.utah.edu/research/publications/2016_01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles W. Calomiris & Stephen H. Haber, 2015. "Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10177-2.
    2. James Crotty, 2009. "Structural causes of the global financial crisis: a critical assessment of the 'new financial architecture'," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 33(4), pages 563-580, July.
    3. Viral V. Acharya & T. Sabri Öncü, 2013. "A Proposal for the Resolution of Systemically Important Assets and Liabilities: The Case of the Repo Market," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 9(1), pages 291-351, January.
    4. Palley,Thomas I., 2013. "From Financial Crisis to Stagnation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107612464, September.
    5. Freixas, Xavier & Laeven, Luc & Peydró, José-Luis, 2015. "Systemic Risk, Crises, and Macroprudential Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262028697, April.
    6. Martin Gilens, 2014. "Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9836.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Korkut Alp Erturk, 2019. "Intrinsic Moral Hazard," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2019_03, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    2. Sylvain Benoit & Jean-Edouard Colliard & Christophe Hurlin & Christophe Pérignon, 2017. "Where the Risks Lie: A Survey on Systemic Risk," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(1), pages 109-152.
    3. Thomas Goda & Özlem Onaran & Engelbert Stockhammer, 2014. "A case for redistribution? Income inequality and wealth concentration in the recent crisis," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 12186, Universidad EAFIT.
    4. Eliana Lauretta & Sajid M. Chaudhry & Daniel Santamaria, 2023. "Unveiling the black swan of the finance‐growth Nexus: Assumptions and preliminary evidence of virtuous and unvirtuous cycles," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 3749-3773, October.
    5. Peydró, José-Luis & Jiménez, Gabriel & Kenan, Huremovic & Moral-Benito, Enrique & Vega-Redondo, Fernando, 2020. "Production and financial networks in interplay: Crisis evidence from supplier-customer and credit registers," CEPR Discussion Papers 15277, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Josh Ryan-Collins, 2015. "Is Monetary Financing Inflationary? A Case Study of the Canadian Economy, 1935-75," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_848, Levy Economics Institute.
    7. Baah Aye Kusi & Lydia Adzobu & Alex Kwame Abasi & Kwadjo Ansah-Adu, 2020. "Sectoral Loan Portfolio Concentration and Bank Stability: Evidence from an Emerging Economy," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 19(1), pages 66-99, April.
    8. Michael Wosser, 2015. "The Determinants of Systemic Banking Crises A Regulatory Perspective," Economics Department Working Paper Series n265-15.pdf, Department of Economics, National University of Ireland - Maynooth.
    9. R. Barrell & D. Karim & C. Macchiarelli, 2020. "Towards an understanding of credit cycles: do all credit booms cause crises?," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(10), pages 978-993, July.
    10. Ippolito, Filippo & Peydró, José-Luis & Polo, Andrea & Sette, Enrico, 2016. "Double bank runs and liquidity risk management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 135-154.
    11. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.
    12. Stavros E. Arvanitis & Theodoros V. Stamatopoulos & Dimitris Terzakis, 2018. "Is There a Non-linear Relationship of Market Value with Cash and Ownership?," SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, SPOUDAI Journal of Economics and Business, University of Piraeus, vol. 68(1), pages 3-25, January-M.
    13. Yılmaz Akyüz, 2018. "Inequality, financialisation and stagnation," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 29(4), pages 428-445, December.
    14. Shekhar Aiyar & Charles W. Calomiris & Tomasz Wieladek, 2015. "How to Strengthen the Regulation of Bank Capital: Theory, Evidence, and A Proposal," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 27(1), pages 27-36, March.
    15. Tine Buyl & Thomas Gehrig & Jonas Schreyögg & Andreas Wieland, 2022. "Resilience: A Critical Appraisal of the State of Research for Business and Society," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 74(4), pages 453-463, December.
    16. German Forero-Laverde, 2016. "Are All Booms and Busts Created Equal? A New Methodology for Understanding Bull and Bear Stock Markets," UB School of Economics Working Papers 2016/339, University of Barcelona School of Economics.
    17. Ambrocio, Gene & Hasan, Iftekhar & Jokivuolle, Esa & Ristolainen, Kim, 2020. "Are bank capital requirements optimally set? Evidence from researchers’ views," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    18. Eckhard Hein, 2016. "Secular stagnation or stagnation policy? Steindl after Summers," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 69(276), pages 3-47.
    19. Caner Bakir, 2017. "How can interactions among interdependent structures, institutions, and agents inform financial stability? What we have still to learn from global financial crisis," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(2), pages 217-239, June.
    20. Daniel Attah-Kyei & Charles Andoh & Saint Kuttu, 2023. "Risk, technical efficiency and capital requirements of Ghanaian insurers," Risk Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(4), pages 1-27, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    financial deregulation; collective action failure; excessive risk taking; moral hazard JEL Classification: D72; C70; G20; G18;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uta:papers:2016_01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuutus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.