A Text-Based Analysis of the International Financial Regulatory Response to the Crisis

The global financial crisis that began in 2007 triggered a wave of international financial regulatory reforms – the “G20-FSB agenda” – aimed to prevent future financial crises. While the full scope of reforms was expansive – covering everything from bank capital to resolution to securitization – scholarly analyses typically focus on some subset of the agenda – often on one, individual reform. Though issue-specific literature has generated many insights, as the population of international regulations expands, examining any one part of the population is ever more limited to characterize and evaluate international financial regulations as a whole. This paper takes a different approach and adopts a bird’s-eye view of international financial reform; it defines the full population of post-crisis international regulatory reforms and builds a novel database of international regulatory initiatives. We use this database to ask unique research questions about the content of international financial regulatory reforms and the set of international bodies that contribute to the design of these policies.