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Discussion Paper
Worker Flows in Banking Regulation
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, job transitions of personnel in banking supervision and regulation between the public and private sectors?often labeled the revolving door?have come under intense scrutiny and have been blamed by certain economists (Johnson and Kwak), legal scholars (John Coffee in the Financial Times), and policymakers (Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, Section 968) for distorting regulators? actions in favor of banks. However, other commentators have downplayed these distortions and presented a more benign viewpoint of these worker flows?as a means for regulatory ...
Report
The revolving door and worker flows in banking regulation
Drawing on a large sample of publicly available curricula vitae, this paper traces the career transitions of federal and state U.S. banking regulators and provides basic facts on worker flows between the regulatory and private sectors resulting from the revolving door. We find strong countercyclical net worker flows into regulatory jobs, driven largely by higher gross outflows into the private sector during booms. These worker flows are also driven by state-specific banking conditions as measured by local banks? profitability, asset quality, and failure rates. The regulatory sector seems to ...