It is a pleasure to participate in San Francisco’s Innovation Office Hours. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco is a leader of our engagement with the tech community. And the Federal Reserve’s Innovation Office Hours serve as an important forum to engage on innovation in the financial system with financial institutions, fintechs, technology companies, nonprofits, and other stakeholders. We have benefited from learning about the work you are doing to promote healthy innovation in…

Academics and practitioners, including lawyers, emphasize the importance of conservative accounting to lenders and corporate boards, allowing them to intervene and take corrective actions at an early stage. However, conservative accounting may also increase the risk of false alarms and prompt excessive interventions. In light of this downside, the overwhelming and in many cases unconditional support that conservative accounting often receives is puzzling. We aim to reconcile the support for conservatism with the concern for…

Competition v Privacy. Competition and consumer authorities are increasingly considering the implications of digital platforms’ ownership and use of consumer data and whether concerns about harm to privacy are indicative of a lack of competition. For a long time the orthodoxy in the EU had been that competition authorities were sensitive to the possible issues of data concentration, but, equally, were careful to contain their analysis. The prevailing view was best summarized by the EU …

Academics and practitioners, including lawyers, emphasize the importance of conservative accounting to lenders and corporate boards, allowing them to intervene and take corrective actions at an early stage. However, conservative accounting may also increase the risk of false alarms and prompt excessive interventions. In light of this downside, the overwhelming and in many cases unconditional support that conservative accounting often receives is puzzling. We aim to reconcile the support for conservatism with the concern for…

Insurance companies try to detect and reduce risk. Health insurers encourage preventative care, fire insurers insist on functioning sprinklers, police insurers investigate alleged misconduct and drop departments that tolerate excessive force, and Hollywood insurers flag risky scenes as requiring stunt doubles. These efforts make sense – it is the insurer’s money on the line if the client makes a claim – and they tend to benefit society. Unfortunately, something is different about D&O insurance, which…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently announced that it will adjust its supervision program by rescheduling a portion of its planned examination work. Instead, the agency will conduct prioritized assessments, which it describes as higher-level inquiries intended to cover a greater number of institutions and help the CFPB ensure that entities are attentive to practices that may result in consumer harm. Among the areas the CFPB intends to…