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The purpose of this paper is to debate on how to achieve, in countries that have invested in the North American model of the regulatory state, the greatest efficiency in creating norms for the organization of public and private activities in order to guarantee the autonomy and technical impartiality required for the proper functioning of regulatory agencies.

This paper describes the development of the legal framework regarding regulatory agencies in Brazil. The research was based on bibliographical data, media reports, and the Brazilian Supreme Court decisions.

The regulation dissemination through regulatory agencies in Brazil has given rise to a series of controversies concerning the limits of their performance and the extent of their technical discretion. According to the findings, it is concluded that these independent agencies should be guided by the following four pillars: (1) the legal rule of fixed-term in office; (2) the principle of lesser control intensity (deference) of the agency acts; (3) the prohibition of contingency of agencies’ budgetary resources; and (4) the prohibition of agency powers suppression. Otherwise, the institutional capacity of agencies will be diminished and their neutral action in technical matters will be compromised.

This paper shows how enhanced autonomy and technical impartiality can be useful for better regulatory governance in other countries, preventing them from suffering from the same problems that have occurred in Brazil.

The purpose of this study is to integrate institutional theory with current research in corporate political strategy and political science to examine the relationship between organizations and regulatory agencies. It seeks to explore the limits of the power of the state to regulate organizations by comparing the historical timing of industry regulation of two different fields. It aims to examine two US regulatory agencies – the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The paper presents a longitudinal analysis of two US regulatory agencies that illustrates differences in agency responses to firm resistance. Specifically, event history analysis and maximum likelihood estimation are used to examine the impact that firms in the commercial airline and automobile industry have in the rule‐making process of the FAA and NHTSA.

Distinct differences were found between the rule‐making context of the airline and automobile industries.

The study focuses on the rule‐making context of two regulatory agencies. Examining additional agencies in future studies would help confirm the results of this study. Moreover, because the study is limited to regulatory agencies in the USA, the results may not be directly generalizable to other nations.

This study emphasizes the importance of historical context and its impact on current industry conditions, particularly in regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine insurance regulation theories, regulatory agency structures and measures.

This study investigates significance of regulatory agency structure, key regulatory measures, political stability and cultural dimension in insurance markets of 56 developed and developing countries for 2005‐2009.

It was found that insurance consumption is lower in countries with an authority exclusively for insurance regulation but life insurance consumption is higher when the agency is part of government or when another agency is jointly responsible for insurance regulation. Market entry regulation leads to lower consumption whereas market exit regulation has the opposite effect. Solvency regulation and required use of standard forms for insurer financials lead to greater consumption of insurance. A positive impact on the nonlife market is observed for accounting regulation and regulator's intervention power.

Price control regulation may lower consumption of insurance whereas tariff rating brings about a rise in the consumption. Regulation of insurance intermediaries or corporate governance may lower insurance consumption whereas the requirement that insurers employ an actuary or actuaries gives rise to the consumption.

The author found no difference between OECD and non‐OECD countries. However, corruption‐freeness and inflation impact insurance consumption. Using OECD country data only, a negative impact was found of the single agency structure and tariff regulation in the life insurance market and a positive impact of regulation by two or more agencies in the life insurance market and of price control regulation in the nonlife insurance market. Corruption‐freeness positively affects the loss ratio in the life insurance market and the combined ratio in the nonlife insurance market.

The wave of regulatory reforms in European telecoms and electricity industries has had an important impact on the structure of the state as well as of corporations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the establishment of these regulatory organizations at the state and corporate levels within a unified theoretical framework, that is grounded in the politics of regulation.

The case selection includes governance structures at the state and corporate levels in 16 European countries in both telecoms and electricity.

The data reveal that regulatory agencies exist in both telecoms and electricity sectors in all 16 countries under study, with the notable exception of Switzerland's electricity sector. At the same time, business corporate reforms were also evident, mainly via the creation of corporate regulatory offices at the headquarters of the firms. These departments, which redefine the patterns of responsibility within the corporation and have played the leading role in the negotiations with the external regulatory environment.

This paper strives to overcome the tendency in the scholarly literature to look only at one or the other aspect of the growth of regulatory development and therefore also to offer a narrow understanding of the growth of regulation. It asserts that the commonalities in the expansion of autonomous regulatory agencies and corporate regulatory departments suggest that the growth in the regulatory professionalization of the state and of business corporations reflects the changing nature of capitalist economy and society and the rise of a new global order of “regulatory capitalism”.

In this paper, the authors examine the association between the banking regulatory regime and the quality of bank earnings. We further investigate whether the banking agency regulatory characteristics moderate the association between banking regulation and earnings quality.

Using panel data spanning 29 years over the period 1991 to 2019, the authors model bank earnings quality as a function of scores for banking regulation for 170 banks in the East African region using both the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation methods.

The results, which are robust for endogeneity among other checks, reveal a positive impact of bank regulatory mechanisms on the quality of bank earnings. The authors further establish differential impact of specific regulatory mechanisms, with some contributing positively toward earnings management while others contributing negatively toward earnings management. The differential impacts of banking regulation on earnings quality are also manifested in the country-level analyses.

First, the study utilises a mix of bank-specific, country-specific as well as economy-specific variables in one dataset. Second, the authors utilise survey-based data using the World Bank's Bank Regulation and Supervision Surveys (BRSS) for the periods 1999 to 2019. The authors assume that the bank regulatory mechanisms in place pre-1999 are close to the mechanisms in place as per the 1999 BRSS. Given limitations in data availability, the authors are not able to control for banks engaging in multiple activities such as insurance, underwriting of securities, FinTechs, among others.

The results are useful in bridging the gap between theory and practice regarding the expected effect of strict banking regulations on the quality of earnings in Eastern African Banks. For the positive impact of banking regulation on bank earnings quality to be felt, the institutional, social and environmental specificities of the five selected countries need to be adequately developed and taken into consideration.

This study is perhaps the first to utilise a large dataset of commercial banks from countries in a developing region characterised by relatively lower enforcement and dynamism in the banking regulation. Further, in-depth studies on the association between banking regulation and earnings quality remain sparse.

This paper seeks to examine the role that regulation and regulatory agencies played in the creating of the subprime mortgage market, and the subsequent crash of the mortgage market. The paper has two goals. First, it seeks to document the degree to which the US housing markets, and the US housing finance market, were regulated prior to the crash. Second, it seeks to show that regulatory bodies set policies which created both incentives and explicit requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as depository institutions, to enter the subprime market.

The paper examines the regulatory environment of the subprime market. It uses regulatory filings and other documents as primary sources.

The popular perception that the subprime mortgage market arose because housing finance was largely unregulated is incorrect. In point of fact, the housing finance market was very heavily regulated. Indeed, the paper shows that the creation of the subprime market was a formal goal of the federal government, and that federal regulatory agencies explicitly required participation by the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs).

The paper's primary implication is that incentive conflicts within the US housing finance system significantly contributed to the mortgage crisis. These incentive conflicts were not just within private firms, but also extend to the GSEs and regulatory agencies. Regulatory agencies not only failed to anticipate the crisis; they actively encouraged the policies which created it. As a result, the primary focus of reform efforts should be on identifying and eliminating such conflicts.

The purpose of the paper is to identify the factors that have moved some regulators around the world to restructure their regulatory agencies towards an integrated information and communication technology (ICT) regulator.

This paper uses the theory of transaction costs as an analytical framework to analyze the regulatory convergence efforts of the UK, India, Malaysia, and South Africa. It relies on case study methodology to elucidate the obstacles towards a converged policy framework.

The cases show that these countries moved towards a converged regulator and laws to eliminate obsolete rules that were hampering investment and slowing competition in the ICT sector. The governments also wanted to eliminate some redundancies and simplify the rules used in regulating ICTs. For some countries the ICT regulator maintains traditional industry distinctions but others moved towards an issues‐organizing framework. The challenges included training, consultations with affected parties, changes in the law, and coping with rules that were still valid.

Given the rapid development of technology and the blurring boundaries of ICTs, regulators are advised to make changes to their regulatory bodies and adopt a more flexible regime of laws and regulators that are able to accommodate technological and industry changes.

The paper makes a unique contribution by linking the theories of collective action and transactions cost to explain why convergence of telecommunications regulation happens and the obstacles that regulatory agencies face in the process.

This paper maintains that regulatory effectiveness can be understood in terms of two models of regulation, the enforcement and the regulatory. Further, effective regulation is much influenced by the strengths and weaknesses of regulatory agencies, their regulating grasp.

Several recent developments (notably, the breakdown of traditional distinctions between different types of financial activity, the globalisation of financial markets and increasing emphasis on systemic stability as a regulatory objective) have prompted policy‐makers to search for an ‘optimum’ regulatory structure that is adapted to the new market environment. Further impetus has been given to this debate by the radical overhaul of regulatory structures, along quite different lines in Australia, the UK and Japan, and the ongoing deliberations within the US Congress over structured financial reform. This paper examines alternative ways of organising the regulatory function in the context of the new financial market environment. The first section reviews the objectives, targets and techniques of regulation. The second section describes the new market environment and the restructuring of the financial services industry. The third section assesses the implications of this new environment for the structure of regulation. The fourth section addresses the international dimension. The final section provides a summary and conclusion. The paper is based on a presentation made at the World Bank Conference, El Salvador, June 1998.

The current emphasis in anti‐money laundering (AML)/ counter terrorist financing (CTF) regulation on “risk‐based” strategies means that regulatory, law enforcement and reporting agencies need to respond to money laundering and terrorist‐financing threats in ways that are proportionate to the risks involved. However, the way that risk is conceptualized remains vague, and the requirements on agencies imposed by the risk‐based approach involve a significant element of uncertainty. The paper addresses these issues.

This paper examines the attributes of risk as it applies to AML/CTF strategy in the context of regulatory risk and related forms of risk assessment, and argues that there are a number of conditions that must be met if risk‐based decision‐making for AML/CTF is to work effectively.

This paper argues that there are a number of conditions that must be met if risk‐based decision‐making is to work effectively. Three of the most important conditions are that there has to be agreement about what risk is being decided on; there must be explicit, quantifiable models of risk, and those responsible for developing and refining risk‐based decision models must have access to knowledge about the outcomes of assessments.

The paper identifies the need for fundamental changes in the relationship between the regulators and the regulated.