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Review of Finance Vol. 6 No. 3 2002

Enhancing Bank Transparency: A Re-assessment

Ari Hyytinen1; Tuomas Takalo2

1 Research Institute of the Finnish Economy · 2 Bank of Finland

open access

Abstract

Transparency regulation aims at reducing financial fragility by strengthening market discipline. There are, however, two elementary properties of banking that may render such regulation inefficient at best and detrimental at worst. First, an extensive financial safety net may eliminate the disciplinary effect of transparency regulation. Second, achieving transparency is costly for banks, as it dilutes their charter values, and hence also reduces their private costs of risk-taking. We consider both the direct costs of complying with disclosure requirements and the indirect transparency costs stemming from imperfect property rights governing information and particularly infer the conditions under which transparency regulation cannot reduce financial fragility.

DOI
10.1023/a:1022037025942
Volume
6
Issue
3
Pages
429-445
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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