Permissive laws deputize financial professionals to screen for misbehavior without providing explicit incentives. These are very common in financial markets. To evaluate their effectiveness, we exploit the staggered adoption of the 2016 Model Act provisions intended to curb elder abuse. We find a drop in reports of abuse by financial professionals to the Department of Treasury and, separately, in financial crimes against the elderly as monitored by the FBI . The effect is stronger where the elderly are more isolated. Our results highlight the role financial professionals play in combating social problems and the impact of permissive policies.

The Dodd-Frank Act shifted regulatory jurisdiction over “ midsize” investment advisers from the SEC to state-securities regulators. Client complaints against midsize advisers increased relative to those continuing under SEC oversight by 30 to 40 percent of the unconditional probability. Complaints increasingly cited fiduciary violations and rose more where state regulators had fewer resources. Advisers responding more to weaker oversight had past complaints, were located farther from regulators, faced less competition, had more conflicts of interest, and served primarily less-sophisticated clients. Our results inform optimal regulatory design in markets with informational asymmetries and search frictions.