IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/9235.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Towards a Legal Theory of Finance

Author

Listed:
  • Pistor, Katharina

Abstract

This paper develops the building blocks for a legal theory of finance. LTF holds that financial markets are legally constructed and as such occupy an essentially hybrid place between state and market, public and private. At the same time, financial markets exhibit dynamics that frequently put them in direct tension with commitments enshrined in law or contracts. This is the case especially in times of financial crises when the full enforcement of legal commitments would result in the self-destruction of the financial system. This law-finance paradox tends to be resolved by suspending the full force of law where the survival of the system is at stake; that is, at its core. Here, power becomes salient. This helps explain why finance is concentrated around ultimate lenders of last resort and why regulating finance?s core has become so elusive. It also holds lessons for future reforms.

Suggested Citation

  • Pistor, Katharina, 2012. "Towards a Legal Theory of Finance," CEPR Discussion Papers 9235, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9235
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP9235
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pacces Alessio M, 2017. "The Role of the Future in Law and Finance," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 23(2), pages 1-14, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Finance; Financial crisis; Financial regulation; Law; Political economy; Power;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F5 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services
    • K0 - Law and Economics - - General
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law
    • N20 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • P1 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9235. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.