Harvard Kennedy School Papers

This series of six papers argues that new technology can enable most consumers to lead far
healthier financial lives by both protecting them from harm and widening their access to affordable
services. It further argues that in many respects, technology-based innovation can be…

As discussed in Paper 1 in this series, the United States has sought for nearly a half-century to
foster consumer financial fairness and inclusion through regulation, and the financial industry has
responded with extensive investment in efforts to comply. It is timely to evaluate how well…

As discussed in the first and second papers in the Regulation Innovation series, the evidence is
compelling that current regulatory policy aimed at consumer financial protection and inclusion is
producing poor results, and sometimes counterproductive ones, at a high cost to industry and…

Both finance and financial regulation have always presented intractable problems that have
persisted, despite best efforts of policymakers, for decades and sometimes even centuries. In both realms, the thorniest of these problems are now being attacked by innovators using new…

Innovation has enormous potential to make finance more fair and inclusive, to make the financial
system more competitive and healthy, and to make financial regulation more effective and efficient.
At the same time, it carries great downside risk. Technology is amoral, usable for both good…

“Transforming” financial regulation for the digital age will be extremely difficult. Policymakers
are at risk both of inadvertently choking off desirable fintech and of failing to prevent news harms it may bring. Traditional approaches are likely to create piecemeal legislation and regulation…