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Regulatory conceptions of unacceptable market practices under three policy scenarios

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Abstract

This article seeks to promote a research agenda on an important and topical issue: how do changes in public policy on financial markets re-shape regulators’ conceptions of acceptable and unacceptable market practices, and their related enforcement styles? Three broad regulatory scenarios are tentatively explored and contrasted. Scenario I, ‘regulation lite’, is taken as being characteristic of the period before the emergence of the global financial crisis in 2007–2008. Scenario II, ‘tightening up’, refers to the recent, still-emerging, contested and currently unclear pattern of regulatory activism in response to the crisis. Scenario III refers to the possibility that financial market regulation might develop further in a context of ‘EU economic government’. The objective is to explore how, under each of those policy scenarios, financial market regulators construe conflict of interest and insider trading, how they differentiate these from normal market practices, and what are the response options.

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  1. FRG EUR, Postbus, 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Nicholas Dorn

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  1. Nicholas Dorn
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Correspondence to Nicholas Dorn.

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1(PhD Sociology) is Professor of International Safety and Governance in the Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, and a UK independent researcher. He teaches and researches on interplays between the state and the market in the making of financial market regulation and of international (in)security. Recent publications cover aspects of economic crime, harm, corporate security and how a financial market regulator might set priorities for enforcement. Abstracts at http://ssrn.com/author=821888.

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Dorn, N. Regulatory conceptions of unacceptable market practices under three policy scenarios. J Bank Regul 12, 48–68 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/jbr.2010.18

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