Financial Gatekeepers: Can They Protect Investors? [Paperback]

Developed country capital markets have devised a set of institutions and actors to help provide investors with timely and accurate information they need to make informed investment decisions. These actors have become known as financial gatekeepers and include auditors, financial analysts, and credit rating agencies.
Corporate financial reporting scandals in the United States and elsewhere in recent years, however, have called into question the sufficiency of the legal framework governing these gatekeepers. Policymakers have since responded by imposing a series of new obligations, restrictions, and punishments?all with the purpose of strengthening investor confidence in these important actors. Financial Gatekeepersprovides an in-depth look at these new frameworks, especially in the United States and Japan. How have they worked? Are further refinements appropriate? These are among the questions addressed in this timely and important volume. Contributors include Leslie Boni (University of New Mexico), Barry Bosworth (Brookings Institution), Tomoo Inoue (Seikei University), Zoe-Vonna Palmrose (University of Southern California), Frank Partnoy (University of San Diego School of Law), George Perry (Brookings Institution), Justin Pettit (UBS), Paul Stevens (Investment Company Institute), Peter Wallison (American Enterprise Institute)

Yasuyuki Fuchitais a senior managing director at the Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research in Tokyo. He is coeditor ofAfter the Crash: The Future of Finance(2010) andPrudent Lending Restored(2009), both published by Brookings.Robert E. Litanis a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and vice president for research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation. Among his many books isGood Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity(Yale University Press, 2007), written with William J. Baumol and Carl J. Schramm.