Guest post by Lawrence J. White, Robert Kavesh Professor in Economics, NYU Stern School of Business

The U.S. regulatory landscape--especially with regard to financial regulation—is maddeningly complex.  It is easy to make a case for a drastic simplification, and the authors of this blog have done so here. But there is value in diversity—including regulatory diversity. Consequently, with regard to the regulatory framework, as is true of most other areas of political economy, we need to consider the costs as well as the benefits of any proposed changes.

Let’s start with the undeniable complexity of U.S. financial regulation: Consider the following array of agencies and jurisdictions (an alphabet-soup glossary appears at the end)...