Resurrecting the Office of Financial Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-30-2020
Abstract
The Office of Financial Research (“OFR”) was created by the Dodd-Frank Act to help address the gaps in data availability and analysis that had hampered governmental authorities in their response to the financial crisis of 2008. It was hoped that the OFR would serve as an “early warning system” that would detect emerging systemic risks through data collection and analysis, but the OFR never really had the opportunity to live up to its promise. During the Obama administration, it suffered from an unsupportive Treasury Department and pushback from other federal financial regulatory agencies; under the Trump administration, the staff and resources of the OFR have been decimated. In a new article, I argue that the Biden administration should seize the opportunity to rebuild the OFR – not only to fulfill the OFR’s initial data collection and analysis functions, but also to address new sources of systemic risk that have emerged since 2010. In particular, the OFR should be rebuilt with the new types of expertise needed to address the growing systemic threats that may arise from climate change and fintech innovation.
Source Publication
The CLS Blue Sky Blog
Recommended Citation
Allen, Hilary J., "Resurrecting the Office of Financial Research" (2020). Popular Media. 575.
https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/pub_disc_media/575