The Squam Lake Working Group on Financial Regulation is a nonpartisan, nonaffiliated group of fifteen academics who have come together to offer guidance on the reform of financial regulation.

The group first convened in fall 2008, amid the deepening capital markets crisis. Although informed by this crisis—its events and the ongoing policy responses—the group is intentionally focused on longer-term issues. It aspires to help guide reform of capital markets—their structure, function, and regulation. This guidance is based on the group’s collective academic, private sector, and public policy experience.

To achieve its goal, the group is developing a set of principles (along with their implications) that are aimed at different parts of the financial system: at individual firms, at financial firms collectively, and at the linkages that connect financial firms to the broader economy.

• David Scharfstein withdrew from the group when he accepted a position at the Treasury Department in September 2009.
• Hyun Song Shin withdrew from the group in January 2010 to serve as chief adviser on international economics to South Korean president Lee Myung-bak.