Réforme de la gouvernance et Public Choice Theory

Suite à la crise financière, plusieurs initiatives de réforme sont proposées pour pallier les défaillances de la gouvernance des institutions financières. L'OCDE, par exemple, a identifié des défaillances et proposé des réformes il y a quelques mois. Ivan a d'ailleurs fait état de ces initiatives précédemment.

Dans un commentaire résumant une étude récente, le Pr Lucian Bebchuk fait valoir que des intérêts privés puissants agissent comme contrepoids à ces initiatives de réforme:

Ordinarily, corporate governance issues are not followed by most citizens. As a result, politicians expect that their decisions on investor protection will have little direct effect on citizens’ voting decisions. By contrast, interest groups with big stakes in the rules follow corporate governance issues closely, and they lobby politicians to get favorable regulations.

The group that, in normal times, can be expected to have the most influence is that which consists of insiders within publicly-traded companies. Corporate insiders are an especially powerful lobbying group because of their ability to use some of the resources of the companies under their control. They have the power to direct their firms’ campaign contributions, to offer positions or business to politicians’ relatives or associates (or to politicians upon retirement), and to use their businesses to support issues and causes that politicians seek to advance.

Il est toutefois optimiste:

So, interest-group politics commonly produce substantial obstacles to reform of corporate governance. However, some events – such as a wave of corporate scandals or a stock market crash – can interrupt the ordinary pro-insider operations of interest-group politics by leading ordinary citizens to pay attention corporate governance failures.

When citizens become so outraged that their voting decisions may be affected by politicians’ failure to improve investor protection, public demand for governance reform can overcome the power of vested interests. Indeed, most major governance reforms occur in such circumstances. In the US, for example, new securities laws were passed following the stock market crash of 1929, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was adopted in 2002, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Internet bubble and the Enron and WorldCom scandals.

By creating a large public demand for reforms, the current crisis offers another opportunity to improve governance arrangements. This opportunity should not be missed.

Le commentaire de Bebchuk puise dans la théorie du Public Choice, dont nous faisons état Ejan Mackaay et moi dans notre ouvrage Analyse économique du droit. Je ne peux qu'être d'accord quant à l'influence des intérêts privés.

Là où je diverge avec Bebchuk, c'est qu'en ce qui concerne la crise financière, il est difficile de considérer que c'est une défaillance de la gouvernance qui est en cause. On peut consulter les études suivantes qui étayent ces doutes:

Corporate Governance in the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis: Evidence from Financial Institutions Worldwide

Why Did Some Banks Perform Better during the Credit Crisis? A Cross-Country Study of the Impact of Governance and Regulation

Did Corporate Governance 'Fail' During the 2008 Stock Market Meltdown? The Case of the S&P 500

Ainsi, peut-être que la gouvernance n'est pas le point sur lequel les réformes devraient porter prioritairement, même si la rémunération des hauts dirigeants et employés clefs a pu y être pour quelque chose.