"Gamblers and Merchants" The Politics of Implementing Post-Crisis OTC Regulatory Reform: The US and EU
This study investigates the political sources of change in the regulatory authority for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives that were brought about by the global financial crisis of 2008. OTC contracts have grown in popularity since the 1980s as firms in advanced market economies have increasingly used them to mitigate their exposure to international economic volatility. However, their proliferation also contributed to complex webs of financial interconnectedness that served to exacerbate the global financial crisis. In the wake of the crisis, public officials across the industrialized economies sought to reform this vast market, which previously had been exempt from direct public regulatory oversight. This dissertation documents a marked shift in regulatory authority after the crisis from a regime that reflected the preferences of the United States and United Kingdom for a deregulated model to a regulatory model that reflected new regulatory preferences in the United States and the European Union. The dissertation examines alternative explanations for this shift to a new Transatlantic regulatory consensus. It finds limited support for materialist theories based on market power, which contend that the degree of convergence around the preferences of one country should be proportional to its market power. Instead, it finds support for an agent-centered historical institutionalist approach that explains the shift in regulatory authority with attention to how marginalized regulatory actors mobilized to have their preferences realized during the implementation of post-crisis OTC reform in the United States and the European Union.
International relations, Public policy, Finance, Crisis, Derivatives, Global, OTC, Reform, Regulation
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