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As financial markets across the world become more integrated, the potential for financial shocks to be transmitted both from one jurisdiction to another and from one financial sector to another increases. At the same time differences in national regulatory arrangements can be the source of important competitive distortions between financial institutions. Against this background national authorities have been seeking to coordinate the regulation of securities firms and of batiks undertaking securities business. This paper, which is published in two parts, aims to clarify some of the policy issues arising from recent convergence initiatives by examining the US capital adequacy rules for US investment firms and contrasting the US approach with European securities regulation as formulated in the Capital Adequacy Directive. The first part of this paper was published in the previous issue of Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance.

As financial markets across the world become more integrated, the potential for financial shocks to be transmitted both from one jurisdiction to another and from one financial sector to another increases. At the same time differences in national regulatory arrangements can be the source of important competitive distortions between financial institutions. Against this background national authorities have been seeking to coordinate the regulation of securities firms and of banks undertaking securities business. This paper, which is published in two parts, aims to clarify some of the policy issues arising from recent convergence initiatives by examining the US capital adequacy rules for US investment firms and contrasting the US approach with European securities regulation as formulated in the Capital Adequacy Directive. The second part of this paper will be published in the next issue of Journal of Financial Regulation & Compliance.

Having been hailed as the most important contribution to stabilising the US financial system after the 1929—33 crash, deposit insurance is now being blamed for financial destabilisation, particularly in emerging markets. This paper focuses on the relationship between deposit insurance and systemic stability in the banking system, drawing on recent experience in the USA, Europe and Japan. The conclusion is that if there is an embedded perception that in the last resort depositors will be protected beyond insurance limits then market‐orientated solution to the problems of ‘moral hazard’ and excessive risk taking cannot work.

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.

This case pertains to one of the most important topics in financial accounting and reporting: revenue recognition. It is intended for use in a required MBA financial accounting course or in an MBA elective course in Financial Reporting and Analysis. The company, Better Buy, Inc., is an electronics retailer selling TVs and other electronic products. The company is a bit unique, however, in that it not only sells major brand TVs, but it also sells TVs under its own brand that carry a one-year warranty for which the retailer—not the manufacturer—is responsible. The company also offers an additional two-year warranty on its TVs that also is the sole responsibility of the retailer. The case asks students to address a number of revenue recognition situations along with the associated expenses. These situations include a product sale where the sales price also includes a warranty provision, a “bundle” of a product sale and an extended warranty sale, and a bundle of a product sale and an extended warranty sale where the company has an agreement to outsource the servicing of its extended warranty service

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

Regulation and compliance professionals and students of regulation will find these books interesting and thought provoking. Although many a reader would be justifiably sceptical about a book with ‘The Future of…’ in its title Alan Gait's work contains so much valuable historical detail about US banking, insurance and securities regulation that it manages to avoid being just another journalistic work of financial punditry. It is an ambitious book and raises some very big questions in the introduction. Was regulation of financial markets and institutions called for in the 1930s? Was deregulation of financial markets and institutions called for in the 1970s and 1980s? Is reregulation of financial institutions called for in the 1990s? What changes in regulation and financial structure are likely to take place by the year 2000? It seeks to answer these and many (almost too many) other questions by casting a historical perspective on each of the three industries, examining issues like structural change, the impact of technology and the future of all of the major players within the financial services industry and asking what they bode for the future of regulation. For those prepared to read all 386 pages it is a mine of information and, to a lesser degree, insights providing an excellent overview of the past, present and possible future US regulatory scene. However, the book has been written with the busy professional in mind who may be interested only in one of the three industries covered and so it has been designed to be read as a handbook into which one can dip and read only, say, the banking chapters, this automatically detracts from the book's ability to provide a sustained and layered intellectual analysis of some of the big questions asked in the introduction and leaves the reader with the impression of a descriptive account. Subject to that caveat the reader who wishes to deepen their knowledge of the US regulatory scene will enjoy the historical chapter on securities and investment regulation 1940–79 and the chapter on deposit insurance and bank failures puts the Savings and Loans debacle into perspective. Part Four on future prospects for regulation lacks rigour and detail but a useful glossary of US financial terms appears at the end of the book as does an Appendix of major legislation affecting US depository institutions which could have been usefully extended to cover securities and insurance legislation too.