IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ilewps/72.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The political economy of finance and regulatory capture: Evidence from the US Congress

Author

Listed:
  • Silano, Filippo

Abstract

The 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis is a watershed phenomenon that reshaped global capitalism. Stemming from the argument that the Crisis was caused by deregulation, this article assesses to what extent the financial industry influenced the legislative process underlying these reforms. The hypothesis is that, during the deregulation process, the financial industry captured lawmakers' voting behaviour. Drawing on a logistic regression model, this study estimates to what extent 106th -109th Congress roll call votes on financial liberalisation were biased by industry-led campaign contributions and lobbying activities. The main finding shows that members of the US Congress recipient of funding from the financial sector were more prone to support deregulation. Providing systematic empirical evidence of capture, the results support the literature labelling the Crisis as the result of industry-induced deregulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Silano, Filippo, 2023. "The political economy of finance and regulatory capture: Evidence from the US Congress," ILE Working Paper Series 72, University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ilewps:72
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/278103/1/ile-wp-2023-72.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2000. "Capital Market Liberalization, Economic Growth, and Instability," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1075-1086, June.
    2. Bonica Adam, 2016. "Avenues of influence: on the political expenditures of corporations and their directors and executives," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 18(4), pages 367-394, December.
    3. Ross Levine, 2012. "The Governance of Financial Regulation: Reform Lessons from the Recent Crisis," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 39-56, March.
    4. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661314, December.
    5. Randall S. Kroszner & Philip E. Strahan, 1999. "What Drives Deregulation? Economics and Politics of the Relaxation of Bank Branching Restrictions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1437-1467.
    6. Harvey, David, 2007. "A Brief History of Neoliberalism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199283279.
    7. Bonica, Adam, 2016. "Avenues of influence: on the political expenditures of corporations and their directors and executives," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 367-394, December.
    8. Marianne Bertrand & Matilde Bombardini & Francesco Trebbi, 2014. "Is It Whom You Know or What You Know? An Empirical Assessment of the Lobbying Process," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(12), pages 3885-3920, December.
    9. Benjamin J. Keys & Tanmoy Mukherjee & Amit Seru & Vikrant Vig, 2010. "Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 307-362.
    10. Tami Oren & Mark Blyth, 2019. "From Big Bang to Big Crash: The Early Origins of the UK’s Finance-led Growth Model and the Persistence of Bad Policy Ideas," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 605-622, September.
    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. Deniz Igan & Prachi Mishra & Thierry Tressel, 2012. "A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 195-230.
    2. Zhang, Bobo & Zhang, Zhou, 2022. "Shining light on corporate political spending: Evidence from shareholder engagements," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    3. Deniz Igan & Prachi Mishra, 2014. "Wall Street, Capitol Hill, and K Street: Political Influence and Financial Regulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(4), pages 1063-1084.
    4. Zarutskie, Rebecca, 2013. "Competition, financial innovation and commercial bank loan portfolios," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 373-396.
    5. Luc Laeven, 2004. "The Political Economy of Deposit Insurance," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 26(3), pages 201-224, December.
    6. Thorsten Beck, 2013. "Finance, growth and fragility: the role of government," International Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 5(1/2), pages 49-77.
    7. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira & Allan Drazen, 2024. "A Theory of Small Campaign Contributions," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(662), pages 2351-2390.
    8. José María Liberti & Mitchell A. Petersen, 2018. "Information: Hard and Soft," NBER Working Papers 25075, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Rockey, James & Zakir, Nadia, 2020. "When two tribes go to work: Board political diversity and firm performance," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    10. Jihad Dagher, 2018. "Regulatory Cycles: Revisiting the Political Economy of Financial Crises," IMF Working Papers 2018/008, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Giovanni Favara & Jean Imbs, 2015. "Credit Supply and the Price of Housing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 958-992, March.
    12. Liu, Wai-Man & Ngo, Phong T.H., 2014. "Elections, political competition and bank failure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 251-268.
    13. Luigi Zingales, 2011. "Comment on "A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis"," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2011, Volume 26, pages 236-243, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Franklin Allen & Xian Gu & Oskar Kowalewski, 2017. "Financial structure, economic growth and development," Post-Print hal-01917114, HAL.
    15. Alma Cohen & Moshe Hazan & David Weiss, 2021. "Politics and Gender in the Executive Suite," NBER Working Papers 28893, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Mian, Atif & Sufi, Amir & Trebbi, Francesco, 2013. "The Political Economy of the Subprime Mortgage Credit Expansion," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 8(4), pages 373-408, October.
    17. Orkun Saka & Yuemei Ji & Clement Minaudier, 2024. "Political Accountability During Crises: Evidence from 40 Years of Financial Policies," CESifo Working Paper Series 11461, CESifo.
    18. Lambert, Thomas, 2015. "Lobbying on Regulatory Enforcement Actions: Evidence from Banking," HIT-REFINED Working Paper Series 28, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    19. Hazan, Moshe & Cohen, Alma & Weiss, David & Tallarita, Roberto, 2019. "The Politics of CEOs," CEPR Discussion Papers 13710, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. VanHoose, David, 2011. "Systemic Risk and Macroprudential Bank Regulation: A Critical Appraisal," Journal of Financial Transformation, Capco Institute, vol. 33, pages 45-60.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    political economy; financial crisis; deregulation; capture; campaign finance; lobbying; US Congress; voting behaviour; logistic regression;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law
    • K23 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Regulated Industries and Administrative Law
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    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:zbw:ilewps:72. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/irhamde.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.