Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Publication Date
2012
Publication Title
Law & Economics Working Papers
Abstract
The financial crisis of 2008 was caused in part by speculative investment in complex derivatives. In enacting the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress sought to address the problem of speculative investment, but merely transferred that authority to various agencies, which have not yet found a solution. We propose that when firms invent new financial products, they be forbidden to sell them until they receive approval from a government agency designed along the lines of the FDA, which screens pharmaceutical innovations. The agency would approve financial products if they satisfy a test for social utility that focuses on whether the product will likely be used more often for hedging than for speculation. Other factors may be addressed if the answer is ambiguous. This approach would revive and make quantitatively precise the common-law insurable interest doctrine, which helped control financial speculation before deregulation in the 1990s.
Number
589
Recommended Citation
E. Glen Weyl & Eric Posner, "An FDA for Financial Innovation: Applying the Insurable Interest Doctrine to Twenty-First-Century Financial Markets" (John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics Working Paper No. 589, 2012).
Additional Information
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