i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am thankful to my Committee Members for their contributions to this dissertation. I am most grateful to my major Professor, Jay Lund, for his enthusiastic guidance and endless ideas during these four years. His sense of humor contributed to having a pleasant work environment. I am indebted to Professor Richard Howitt for his valuable comments and for providing the computati...

optimal level of regulation and regulatory reform seem to be an undisputed objective . however, in the context of financial regulation there are differences and disagreements over the optimal level of disclosure of information and capital adequacy standards. in this paper, instead of offering a substantive solution , we argue for a competitive process through which the optimal level of disclosu...