Rethinking Regulation of International Finance : Law, Policy and Institutions

Abstract

Why have financial standards and institutions almost always failed to effectively predict and respond to real-world financial crises? The answer, this challenging book shows, is that international financial law suffers from a persistent lack of judicial or quasi-judicial enforcement mechanisms, leaving flaws in the structure of the international financial system that lead inevitably to excesses that threaten the public good of global financial stability. The author, an internationally renowned legal expert on financial and fiscal reforms, responds to the increasingly urgent call for rethinking the structure and the functioning of international financial law. Centering on the concept of enforcement – which continues to be an unresolved issue in the discipline of international financial law – the analysis describes the likely contours of hard-law regulatory reform. It weighs the pros and cons of much-talked-about regulatory and policy issues like the following and more: – policy implications from the transformation of finance from a domestic to an international concept; – new or revised supervisory and regulatory bodies with redefined mandate, jurisdictions and powers; – possibility of a treaty-based structure similar to the European Union's integration framework; and – consolidation of crisis-prevention and crisis-management policies; The analysis takes into account instances from trade and monetary systems pertinent to the development of the discipline of international financial law. A concluding chapter explores possibilities for putting in place an asset-backed resilient financial system based on risk-sharing and empowered to legislate reform and authorized to seek compliance from its members. With its provision of unconventional alternatives for further development of international financial law to realize stable, predictable and robust international markets – including early-warning systems and fully primed crisis-prevention mechanisms – the book explores the essential link between global financial stability, effective regulation and institutional development that will engender realistic global policy solutions. It will prove to be of great importance to regulatory and legal practitioners as well as to academic and think-tank scholars.