The Data Standardization Challenge
Forthcoming in Systemic Risk in the Financial Sector: Ten Years After the Great Crash, edited by Douglas W. Arner, Emilios Avgouleas, Danny Busch and Steven L. Schwarcz (CIGI Press)
Columbia Law and Economics Working Paper No. 598
European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) - Law Working Paper No. 438/2019
29 Pages Posted: 28 Jan 2019
Date Written: January 27, 2019
Abstract
Data standardization offers significant benefits for industry and regulators alike, suggesting that it should be easy. In practice, however, the process has been difficult and slow moving. Moving from an abstract incentive-based analysis to one focused on institutional detail reveals myriad frictions favoring the status quo despite foregone gains. This paper explores the benefits of and challenges confronting standardization, why it should be a top regulatory priority, and how to overcome some of the obstacles to implementation.
The paper also uses data standardization as a lens into the challenges that impede optimal financial regulation. Alongside capture and other common explanations for regulatory failures, this paper suggests that coordination problems, delayed benefits, and other banal, but perhaps no less intractable, challenges are often the real impediments to better financial regulation.
Keywords: data standards; financial regulation
JEL Classification: G18, G28, K2, L51
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation