From social media to mortgage-backed securities, innovation carries both risk and opportunity. Groups of people win, and lose, when innovation changes the ground rules. Looking beyond formal politics, this new book by Cristie Ford argues that we need to recognize innovation, and financial innovation in particular, as a central challenge for regulation. Regulation is at the leading edge of politics and policy in ways that we have not yet fully grasped. Seemingly innocuous regulatory design choices have clear and profound practical ramifications for many of our most cherished social commitments. Innovation is a complex phenomenon that needs to be understood not only in technical terms, but also in human ones. Using financial regulation as her primary example, Ford argues for a fresh approach to regulation, which recognizes innovation for the regulatory challenge that it is, and which binds our cherished social values and our regulatory tools ever more tightly together.
· An empirical and philosophical examination that helps generate fresh ideas for post-crisis financial regulation, challenging established views in regulatory theory, financial and securities law, and literature on innovation · Offers a new perspective that highlights innovation as the consistent undercurrent in finance and a persistent challenge for regulators, perfect for practitioners involved with regulation policies and innovation · Provides a nuanced account that focuses on financial innovation in detail, ideal for students and scholars of administrative and financial law, political science, finance and governance · Explores how government regulation should deal with financial innovation, which will appeal to general and non-expert readers.
1. Innovation as a regulatory challenge: four stories
2. The history and rots of flexible regulation
3. Flexible regulation: key scholarship
4. Flexible regulation scholarship, 1980-2012
5. Flexible regulation and ideology
6. Innovation as regulatory subject
7. Seismic innovation
8. Innovation as sedimentary layers
9. Conclusion.