Randal K Quarles: Law and macroeconomics - the global evolution of macroprudential regulation

Speech by Mr Randal K Quarles, Vice Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the "Law and Macroeconomics" conference, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington DC, 27 September 2019.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Good morning. I would like to thank Georgetown University Law Center and the conference organizers, Anna Gelpern and Adam Levitin, for the opportunity to speak to you.

I was particularly delighted to be asked to speak at today's conference because the topic is law and macroeconomics, a field that my experience has persuaded me is of the first importance, but ill understood, and surprisingly understudied. Now, this may at first blush sound like a beloved former president, venturing into a grocery store-"Golly, can you believe these scanners!?"-because the field of law and economics was already sturdily established when I was in law school back in the Coolidge Administration, and is now well over half a century old. It has been the source of some of the most innovative and influential legal scholarship over the lifetimes of everyone here, and in many ways the insights of the law and economics movement have become the default framework that policy makers and practitioners alike use when we think about the law conceptually, and often even at the level of granular application.