We estimate the shadow cost of capital requirements using data on a costly loophole that allowed banks to relax these constraints. This loophole—liquidity guarantees to assetbacked commercial paper conduits—was exploited by the largest banks before the crisis of 2008. We show theoretically that a bank's use of the loophole reveals its private compliance cost, which takes into account both the costs of issuing equity and the effectiveness of capital regulation. We find that increasing capital requirements would impose a modest cost—220 million a year for all participating banks combined per one-percentage-point increase, and 14 million on average.

We estimate the shadow cost of capital requirements using data on a costly loophole that allowed banks to relax these constraints. This loophole—liquidity guarantees to asset-backed commercial paper conduits—was exploited by the largest banks before the crisis of 2008. We show theoretically that a bank's use of the loophole reveals its private compliance cost, which takes into account both the costs of issuing equity and the effectiveness of capital regulation. We find that increasing capital requirements would impose a modest cost—$220 million a year for all participating banks combined per one-percentage-point increase, and $14 million on average.

We derive a general expression for the value of information to a price-taking investor in a dynamic environment and provide a framework for its estimation. We study the value of both private and public information and break it into its instrumental and psychic parts. To illustrate, we estimate and rank the values of leading macroeconomic indicators (GDP, employment, etc.). Using variations in option prices, we find that consumer-investors with conventional preference parameters would pay 3 to 5 bps of their wealth for a one-time private peek into these indicators. Such signals provide substantial instrumental value but a minor psychic value.Received August 29, 2016; editorial decision June 6, 2018 by Editor Itay Goldstein.

We measure popular sentiment toward finance by applying a large language model to millions of books published in eight countries over hundreds of years. We extensively validate this measure both internally and externally. We document persistent differences in finance sentiment across countries despite ample time-series variation. Books written in the languages of more capitalist countries discuss finance in a more positive context. Finance sentiment is correlated with survey-based measures of financial market participation and income inequality. Finance sentiment declines one year before rather than after financial crises. Positive shocks to finance sentiment are followed by higher output and credit growth.

We analyze the partisanship of Commissioners at the SEC and Governors at the Federal Reserve Board. Using recent advances in machine learning, we identify partisan phrases in Congress, such as “red tape” and “climate change,” and observe their usage among regulators. Although the Fed has remained relatively nonpartisan throughout our sample period (1930–2019), we find that partisanship among SEC Commissioners rose to an all-time high during the 2010-2019 period, driven by more-partisan Commissioners replacing less-partisan ones. Partisanship at the SEC appears in both the language of new SEC rules and the voting behavior of SEC Commissioners.