Government agencies like the EPA frequently use benefit-cost analysis in order to evaluate proposed regulations. By contrast, financial agencies like the SEC and CFTC rarely use benefit-cost analysis, and in recent years have seen regulations struck down by the courts because of regulators’ failure to use benefit-cost analysis or flaws in their benefit-cost analyses. The conference will explore whether government agencies like the SEC and CFTC should be required to comply with a benefit-cost analysis when they issue financial regulations, and if so, how that benefit-cost analysis should be conducted. Participants will contribute their insights into how valuations of the benefits and costs associated with financial regulation can be calculated, or whether they can.

The conference is organized by Eric A. Posner (University of Chicago Law School) and E. Glen Weyl (Department of Economics, University of Chicago) and is funded by the Albert P. Sloan Foundation and the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics.

Friday, October 18

8:45 – 9:00 a.m.    Welcome and Introduction

9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
I.          Quantitative Evaluation of Capital Regulations
A.        Anat Admati (Stanford)
B.        John Cochrane (Chicago)
C.        Lars Hansen (Chicago)

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
II.        Allocative Value of Informational Efficiency
A.        Eric Budish (Chicago) and Peter Cramton (Maryland)
B.        Thomas Philippon (NYU and French government)
C.        Eric Talley (Berkeley)

1:15 – 2:45 p.m.
III.       Insurance versus Gambling
A.        Larry Samuelson (Yale)
B.        Darrell Duffie (Stanford)
C.        Ing-Haw Cheng (Michigan) and Wei Xiong (Princeton)

3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
IV.       The Supply of Consumer Credit
A.        Jonathan Zinman (Dartmouth)
B.        Neale Mahoney (Chicago) and Johannes Stroebel (Chicago)
C.        Omri Ben-Shahar (Chicago)

Saturday, October 19

9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
V.        Rules, Standards and Benefit-Cost Analysis
A.        Prasad Krishnamurthy (Berkeley)
B.        David Weisbach (Chicago)
C.        Eric Posner (Chicago) and Glen Weyl (Chicago)

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
VI.       The Institutional Framework of Benefit-Cost Analysis for Financial Regulation
A.        Dan Carpenter (Harvard)
B.        Jeff Gordon (Columbia)
C.        Robert  Bartlett (Berkeley)