Research Topics

Publications on Risk assessment

There are 3 publications for Risk assessment.
  • Tax Credits Are Industrial Policy: Answering the Derisking Critique on Discipline and Investment


    Working Paper No. 1069 | December 2024
    Originally issued as EDI Working Paper No. 19, March 2024
    The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is criticized for "derisking" private investment by increasing the gains to private firms. The derisking critique argues that the IRA insufficiently disciplines private firms; it does not utilize legal or financial penalties which would force firms to undertake green investment and bar emissions-intensive investment. This paper answers that critique by providing a Post-Keynesian theory of capital expenditure. It argues all industrial policies promote investment by removing or mitigating risks in an environment of fundamental uncertainty. Industrial policies tackle different risks and can be assessed or compared on their effectiveness in doing so. An insufficient investment growth rate need not be an indication of their failure, but that complementary policies are required to mitigate risks or make risks calculable. For instance, the IRA’s uncapped Investment Tax Credit (ITC) increases clean energy investment by reducing project reliance on expensive debt financing. The ITC does not address other barriers to clean energy investment: transmission and distribution, permitting, or the need for clean firm resources. This is not a failure of discipline, but rather an indication that more state intervention must facilitate rapid decarbonization. The derisking critique’s emphasis on disciplining private firms into investment reallocation underestimates real obstacles to investment, particularly how those obstacles shape choices faced by firms. It also affects the character of investment itself, making it inaccurate to describe investment as the allocation of fixed financial resources. The derisking critique lacks a mechanism connecting financial or legal disciplinary measures on firms to an increase in green capital expenditure. This causes the derisking critique to miss a more productive avenue for investigating industrial policy conditionalities: linking them to a broader state-led coordination of varying industrial policy priorities, the timing of capital expenditure to meet them, and seizing of opportunities presented by their success.
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    Author(s):
    Chirag Lala

  • More Swimming Lessons from the London Whale


    Public Policy Brief No. 129, 2013 | April 2013
    This policy brief by Senior Scholar and Program Director Jan Kregel builds on an earlier analysis (Policy Note 2012/6) of JPMorgan Chase and the actions of the “London Whale,” and what this episode reveals about the larger risks inherent in the financial system. It is clear that the Dodd-Frank Act failed to prevent massive losses by one of the world’s largest banks. This is undeniable evidence that work remains to be done to reform the financial system. Toward this end, Kregel reviews the findings of a recent report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and expands on the lessons that we can draw from the evolution of the London Whale episode. 
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    Author(s):
    Jan Kregel

  • The Wrong Risks


    Policy Note 2012/6 | June 2012
    What a Hedge Gone Awry at JPMorgan Chase Tells Us about What's Wrong with Dodd-Frank

    What can we learn from JPMorgan Chase’s recent self-proclaimed “stupidity” in attempting to hedge the bank’s global risk position? Clearly, the description of the bank’s trading as “sloppy” and reflecting ”bad judgment” was designed to prevent the press reports of large losses from being used to justify the introduction of more stringent regulation of large, multifunction financial institutions. But the lessons to be drawn are not to be found in the specifics of the hedges that were put on to protect the bank from an anticipated decline in the value of its corporate bond holdings, or in any of its other global portfolio hedging activities. The first lesson is this: despite their acumen in avoiding the worst excesses of the subprime crisis, the bank’s top managers did not have a good idea of its exposure, which serves as evidence that the bank was “too big to manage.” And if it was too big to manage, it was clearly too big to regulate effectively.

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    Associated Program:
    Author(s):
    Jan Kregel

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