Banking Regulation – A Textual Analysis (Swiss Press Online 2018, by Marie-José Kolly, Andrea Arežina, Thomas Preusse – Anna Wiederkehr) - Swiss Press Award
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Online und Zeitung)
Marie-José Kolly, Andrea Arežina, Thomas Preusse – Anna Wiederkehr
“In the beginning there was a banking collapse. Then came banking regulation – and never left” is a textual analysis of 163 regulatory documents of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Increasingly stringent regulations have been imposed since the first big banking crash in 1974, with subsequent crises, such as the one in 2008, leading to further tightening of regulations in each incidence. This is illustrated by means of visually appealing graphics. Today, the full set of rules runs to over two million words on 5440 pages. The analysis goes into detail, stating that the average sentences length is 25.7 words, which makes for difficult reading. The binding force of these regulations was assessed by analysing the use of modal verbs: in the entire collected text “must” does not appear half as often as “should”. And the varied terminology used to describe risk reveals which dangers the supervisors perceived as particularly pernicious.
Interview with Marie-José Kolly, Andrea Arežina, Thomas Preusse – Anna Wiederkehr
