International Financial Regulation

Author(s):  
Abraham L. Newman ◽  
Elliot Posner

Chapter 3 describes the international financial regulatory architecture, providing necessary background for the substantive studies that follow. It gives special attention to the architecture’s two defining aspects: the soft law character of the rules it produces and the fragmentation of rule-making by subsectors. A matrix of forums develops advisory prescriptions for specific financial policy areas. The chapter traces the architecture’s origins and evolution, including how policy-makers and standard-setting organizations dealt with the breakdown of traditional boundaries between markets and subsectors. It provides background on the book’s featured causal variable: international soft law. It also offers an original explanation for the architecture’s key features. The chapter highlights the prominent role of domestic institutional arrangements within the United States and other jurisdictions with important markets for the early development of soft law-creating organizations and establishes the role of contingency, sequence, and endogeneity (with reference to domestic institutions) in the architecture’s evolution.

Author(s):  
Abraham L. Newman ◽  
Elliot Posner

Chapter 5 shifts the focus from soft law’s effects on great powers to its impact on influential business groups. It argues that by expanding arenas of contestation to the transnational level, soft law transforms business representation as well as individual industry associations. The chapter’s empirical focus is on banking regulation from the 1980s to the 2000s. Much of the literature on transnational banking standards centers on the role of industry associations and, in particular, on the Institute of International Finance. In this chapter, the authors explain the rise of direct industry participation in and influence over Basel-based standard setting. They show that the orientation and priorities of the IIF as well as its membership and internal structure were deeply conditioned by 1980s international soft law. The IIF’s transformation subsequently set off a series of changes to the ecology of financial industry associations and the politics of financial regulation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-476
Author(s):  
TAKASHI INOGUCHI

This special issue focuses on the role of civil society in international relations. It highlights the dynamics and impacts of public opinion on international relations (Zaller, 1992). Until recently, it was usual to consider public opinion in terms of its influence on policy makers and in terms of moulding public opinion in the broad frame of the policy makers in one's country. Given that public opinion in the United States was assessed and judged so frequently and diffused so globally, it was natural to frame questions guided by those concepts which pertained to the global and domestic context of the United States.


Author(s):  
Tim Büthe ◽  
Walter Mattli

This chapter examines how companies affected by international product standards assess these standards and the extent to which they are able to influence rule-making in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Drawing on the results of a business survey among standards experts in firms in the United States and four European countries (Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom), the chapter considers the importance of institutional complementarity in international standard-setting across five industries: chemicals; rubber and plastic products; medical instruments and medical devices; petroleum products; and iron and steel products. It shows that high complementarity between standard-setting institutions at the domestic level and the institutional structure of standardization at the international level favors European over American interests in ISO and IEC. By contrast, the relatively poor fit between U.S. domestic institutions and the international structure puts U.S. firms at a disadvantage.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 378-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Ferris ◽  
Cheneal Puljević ◽  
Florian Labhart ◽  
Adam Winstock ◽  
Emmanuel Kuntsche

Abstract Aims This exploratory study aims to model the impact of sex and age on the percentage of pre-drinking in 27 countries, presenting a single model of pre-drinking behaviour for all countries and then comparing the role of sex and age on pre-drinking behaviour between countries. Methods Using data from the Global Drug Survey, the percentages of pre-drinkers were estimated for 27 countries from 64,485 respondents. Bivariate and multivariate multilevel models were used to investigate and compare the percentage of pre-drinking by sex (male and female) and age (16–35 years) between countries. Results The estimated percentage of pre-drinkers per country ranged from 17.8% (Greece) to 85.6% (Ireland). The influence of sex and age on pre-drinking showed large variation between the 27 countries. With the exception of Canada and Denmark, higher percentages of males engaged in pre-drinking compared to females, at all ages. While we noted a decline in pre-drinking probability among respondents in all countries after 21 years of age, after the age of 30 this probability remained constant in some countries, or even increased in Brazil, Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. Conclusions Pre-drinking is a worldwide phenomenon, but varies substantially by sex and age between countries. These variations suggest that policy-makers would benefit from increased understanding of the particularities of pre-drinking in their own country to efficiently target harmful pre-drinking behaviours.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRADLEY A. HANSEN

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, New York State trust companies were successful, grew quickly, and failed rarely. The few failures, however, played a leading role in shaping the rules that governed trust companies. Because trust company failures were consistently interpreted as isolated departures from the norm of conservative management, trust companies were able to continue to participate in the rule-making process. The institutions that evolved promoted financial stability by imposing the costs of failure on decision makers and discouraging risky behavior. These failures shed new light on the treatment of failure and the development of corporate governance and financial regulation in the United States


2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD DEEG ◽  
SUSANNE LÜTZ

In this article, the authors examine some effects of economic internationalization on state structures, especially in regard to the distribution of power and authority within federalist systems. Using an institutional rational choice model, they analyze changes in financial regulation and market structures in Germany and the United States. The focus is on the financial realm because of its high degree of internationalization and because, in both countries, financial markets and regulation have historically exhibited federalist traits. The findings indicate that internationalization has led to significant convergence in financial market structures and regulation across the two countries and that in each case this convergence has been accompanied by centralization of financial regulatory authority. Although both the German type of cooperative federalism and the U.S. model of competitive federalism proved to be vulnerable to the growing international pressures, the two countries took different paths of change that reflected differences in domestic institutions. Thus, the authors conclude that convergence is, and will likely remain, of a limited nature.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-99
Author(s):  
Robert W. Denniston

Denniston, R. (2015). Commentary: The land of insurmountable opportunities. The International Journal Of Alcohol And Drug Research, 4(2), 97-99. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v4i2.207Much is known about how to change alcohol policy to reduce harm, but despite the evidence little action has been taken at thenational level in the United States. Government officials have shown little interest in putting prevention research results to work.The influence of the alcohol industry on policy-makers combined with free market ideology has thwarted change despite theefforts of advocacy groups working to reduce harm. The role of the alcohol industry at the national and international level servesas a powerful deterrent to policy change.


2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-865 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL R. TOMZ ◽  
JESSICA L. P. WEEKS

One of the most striking findings in political science is the democratic peace: the absence of war between democracies. Some authors attempt to explain this phenomenon by highlighting the role of public opinion. They observe that democratic leaders are beholden to voters and argue that voters oppose war because of its human and financial costs. This logic predicts that democracies should behave peacefully in general, but history shows that democracies avoid war primarily in their relations with other democracies. In this article we investigate not whether democratic publics are averse to war in general, but whether they are especially reluctant to fight other democracies. We embedded experiments in public opinion polls in the United States and the United Kingdom and found that individuals are substantially less supportive of military strikes against democracies than against otherwise identical autocracies. Moreover, our experiments suggest that shared democracy pacifies the public primarily by changing perceptions of threat and morality, not by raising expectations of costs or failure. These findings shed light on a debate of enduring importance to scholars and policy makers.


2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra M. Desrochers ◽  
Debra J. Holt

In 2005, the Institute of Medicine declared that the prevalence of childhood obesity in the United States ranks as a major health concern. Although the role of television advertising as a possible contributor has received considerable research attention, most previous studies have not included a detailed analysis of children's exposure on all programming or made comparisons with earlier estimates. Therefore, the Bureau of Economics staff at the Federal Trade Commission undertook a comprehensive analysis of television advertising to determine how many and what types of advertisements children are exposed to today and how the findings compare with their exposure before the rise in obesity. This article presents the major findings of the Federal Trade Commission's report and discusses several other issues that help inform the obesity debate. The article's insights will be useful to policy makers, researchers, marketers, and other constituencies involved in developing solutions to the obesity problem.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 4-31
Author(s):  
Ilya Lifshits ◽  
Vladislav Ponamorenko

The global financial crisis strengthened the role of international financial standards in global commercial architecture and outlined the specialization of standard-settingbodies. These standards may be transposed in international agreements or be implemented in the legal order of states and state communities (such as the European Union (EU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)). The development of standard-setting bodies and the evolving process of soft law rulemaking have led to the establishment of a specific mechanism, which may be called “the soft law mechanism.” The authors argue that this mechanism includes several components: normative (IFS), institutional (SSBs), controlling (peer reviews), and assuring (implementing incentives) components. However, despite the rising influence of international financial standards, a strict boundary between soft and hard law should be established. This article outlines these boundaries and justifies the use of the term soft law. In post-crisis global financial regulation, the role of soft law has increased not only in the financial market but also in the field of monetary regulation. Along with the traditional mechanisms of financial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), states may use alternative bilateral and regional mechanisms. At the level of integration associations, soft law manifests in different ways. In the EU, despite the expansion of its field of action, soft law is purely an auxiliary element of the Union’s legal system. In EAEU law, the mechanism of soft-law regulation can beconsidered promising, given the peculiarities of the integration model. 


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