Bridging the knowledge gap on governments as financial institutions

Ask most finance experts about the “world’s largest financial institutions,” and you’ll hear names like Citigroup, ICBC (China’s largest bank) and HSBC. However, governments top the list of large financial institutions, with investment and insurance operations that dwarf those of any private enterprise. For instance, last year the U.S. federal government made almost all student loans and backed over 97% of newly originated mortgages. Add to that Uncle Sam’s lending activities for agriculture, small business, energy and trade, plus its provision of insurance for private pensions and deposits, and you’ll discover it’s an $18-trillion financial institution. By comparison, JP Morgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank, had assets totaling about $2.4 trillion.

While government practices differ across countries, the basic story is much the same everywhere. As the world’s largest and most interconnected financial institutions — and through their activities as rule-makers and regulators — governments have an enormous influence on the allocation of capital and risk in society. And as financial actors they are confronted with the same critical issues as their private-sector peers: How should a government assess its cost of capital? How should its financial activities be accounted for? What are the systemic and macroeconomic effects? Are the institutions well-managed? Are its financial products well-designed?

Surprisingly, little research has focused on governments as financial institutions in their own right, and on finding solutions to the challenges they face. While private-sector financial theory and practice have benefited from decades of transformational innovations, public-sector financial thinking and education have not kept pace.

To help to bridge this knowledge gap, MIT is launching the Center for Finance and Policy (CFP) under the aegis of Sloan’s Finance Group. A primary goal of the CFP is to be a catalyst for innovative, cross-disciplinary, and non-partisan research and educational initiatives. Its activities will address the unique challenges facing governments in their role as financial institutions, and also as regulators of private financial institutions. The aim is to provide much-needed support for policymakers and practitioners that will ultimately lead to improved decision-making, greater transparency, and better financial policies.

A quick look at recent headlines shows just how much is at stake and some of the significant decisions that need to be made. There’s the announcement by the BRICs about the formation of the New Development Bank, which will serve as a channel for large government-backed investments in those countries. In the U.S. there’s been heated debate over whether the Export-Import Bank should be reauthorized and whether the federal student loan programs are adequately serving students. There’s also the question of if, how and when the U.S. mortgage market will be reprivatized.

Research supported by the CFP is organized around three main tracks: the evaluation and management of government financial institutions, the regulation of financial markets and institutions, and the measurement and control of systemic risk. A critical focus of the CFP is the dissemination of knowledge to turn theory and data analysis into practice. That will be accomplished through policy briefs, conferences, the website, a visiting scholars program, and other initiatives.