James K. Glassman, J. W. Verret
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Apr 16, 2013
A rule enacted by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2003 required institutions to adopt and disclose policies for proxy voting that were intended to minimize conflicts between the institutions’ interests and those of their shareholders. An SEC staff interpretation of that rule led to a result almost the opposite of the ruling’s intent. Institutions could easily protect themselves from legal liability by shifting responsibility to proxy advisory firms, which acquired increasing power over corporate governance, to the detriment of shareholders.
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Todd Zywicki
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Jan 15, 2013
This paper describes the current economic and regulatory landscape for prepaid cards. The market appears to be robustly competitive, as recent years have seen declining costs and increasing functionality as well as entry of major players such as American Express and several large banks. Nor is there any evidence that consumers systematically err in the cards that they choose. Absent a demonstrable competitive market failure or systematic consumer abuse, prescriptive regulation of the terms and substance of prepaid cards would likely have unintended consequences that would exceed the benefits to consumers. On the other hand, there are some regulations that might be enacted that could promote competition and consumer welfare in this rapidly evolving market.
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Todd Zywicki, Robert Sarvis
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Jan 14, 2013
Government regulators proposing restrictions on specific forms of consumer credit all too often ignore the reality of how and why consumers use credit. They also ignore lenders’ legitimate reasons for pricing their services as they do; consumers’ legitimate reasons for choosing the financing options they do; the risks consumers face when credit offerings are made unavailable to them; and the many consumers who use the particular forms of consumer credit responsibly and effectively.
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Todd Zywicki
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Oct 01, 2012
In “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Savior or Menace?” Todd Zywicki provides a short history of the CFPB and of consumer credit regulation in America, including many of the lessons researchers have learned from decades of bureaucratic design. The CFPB’s structure, as Zywicki notes, ignores many of these lessons. The paper outlines several known problems that often plague bureaucratic organizations and explains how the CFPB will be particularly vulnerable to these failings unless it sees significant reform.
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Thomas Stratmann, J. W. Verret
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Jun 01, 2012
The field of corporate governance has long considered the costs of the separation of ownership from control in publicly traded corporations and the regulatory and market structures designed to limit those costs.
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Todd Zywicki, Nick Tuszynski
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May 09, 2012
Regulators cannot wish away consumers’ need for credit, and eliminating access to overdraft protection will not correspondingly eliminate this need.
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Testimony & Comments
Who's Watching the Watchmen?
Todd Zywicki | May 24, 2011