Adam Smith's Dinner

The Future of Financial Regulation is an edited collection of papers presented at a major conference at the University of Glasgow in Spring 2009. It draws together a variety of different perspectives on the international financial crisis which began in August 2007 and later turned into a more widespread economic crisis following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the Autumn of 2008. Spring 2009 was in many respects the nadir since valuations in financial markets had reached their low point and crisis management rather than regulatory reform was the main focus of attention. The conference and book were deliberately framed as an attempt to re-focus attention from the former to the latter. The first part of the book focuses on the context of the crisis, discussing the general characteristics of financial crises and the specific influences that were at work during this time. The second part focuses more specifically on regulatory techniques and practices implicated in the crisis, noting in particular an over-reliance on the capacity of regulators and financial institutions to manage risk and on the capacity of markets to self-correct. The third part focuses on the role of governance and ethics in the crisis and in particular the need for a common ethical framework to underpin governance practices and to provide greater clarity in the design of accountability mechanisms. The final part focuses on the trajectory of regulatory reform, noting the considerable potential for change as a result of the role of the state in the rescue and recuperation of the financial system and stressing the need for fundamental re-appraisal of business and regulatory models. This informative book will be of interest to financial regulators and theorists, commercial and financial law practitioners, and academics involved in the law and economics of regulation.

Global Lessons from Fitzgerald : From State and National to Global Integrity Systems

Tony Fitzgerald’s visionary leap was to see beyond localised, individual wrongdoing. He suggested remedies that were systemic, institutionalised, and directed at underlying structural problems that led to corruption. His report said ‘the problems with which this Inquiry is concerned are not merely associated with individuals, but are institutionalized and related to attitudes which have become entrenched’ (Fitzgerald Report 1989, 13). His response was to suggest an enmeshed system of measures to not only respond reactively to future corruption, but also to prevent its recurrence through improved integrity systems. In the two decades since that report the primary focus of corruption studies and anti-corruption activism has remained on corruption at the local level or within sovereign states. International activism was largely directed at co-ordinating national campaigns and to use international instruments to make these campaigns more effective domestically. This reflects the broader fact that, since the rise of the nation state, states have comprised the majority of the largest institutional actors and have been the most significant institution in the lives of most individuals. This made states the ‘main game in town’ for the ‘governance disciplines’ of ethics, law, political science and economics.

Re-conceiving the good life : the key to sustainable globalisation

Resource-intensive, high-carbon, Western lifestyles are frequently criticised as unsustainable and deeply unsatisfying. However, these lifestyles are still attractive to the majority of Westerners and to a high proportion of the developing world’s middle classes. This paper argues that the imminent threat of catastrophic climate change constitutes an immediate political, economic and ethical challenge for citizens of the developed world that cannot be tackled by appeals to asceticism or restraint. There can be no solution to climate change until sustainable conceptions of the good life are developed that those in the west want to live and which others might want to live. While the ultimate solution to climate change is the development of low carbon lifestyles, it is important that government initiatives, governance arrangements and economic incentives support rather than undermine that search. Like the global financial crisis, the climate change crisis also demonstrates what happens when weaknesses in national, corporate and professional governance are exacerbated by weaknesses in global governance. In tackling the latter, it is critical the mistakes now evidenced in the former are avoided – including a rethinking of carbon market and carbon tax alternatives. It is also critical that individuals must take responsibility for their actions as consumers, voters and investors.

Making coups history

International support is capable of making the difference between the successful defense of democracy and its ignominious defeat. Indeed, the perceived probability of both support for democratically chosen leaders and opposition to their attackers can fundamentally shift the balance in the domestic struggle between them. Nevertheless, although changes to international law and international relations justify a greater international role in preventing and deterring coups and erosions, not all responsibility for protecting democracy should be assigned to the international community. Indeed, the first line of defense should be a democracy’s own domestic initiatives, with the main role of the international community being to support a domestic response to threats to democracy.

Four models of the creative industries

Les activités et industries culturelles sont aujourd’hui englobées dans une nouvelle approche, celle d’industries créatives. Dans ce contexte, les interrogations sur les contributions de la culture au développement économique peuvent être repensées de manière élargie. La contribution examine les différentes réponses possibles à cette question, et quatre modèles sont ainsi distingués: l’approche du bien être; l’approche concurrentielle; l’approche de la croissance; l’approche de l’innovation. A chacun de ces modèles correspond une interprétation du lien entre activités créatives et économie. Ce sont ces interprétations dont la pertinence est appréciée à l’aide de données statistiques simples.

Capitalism Quo Vadis?

Transcript: Workshop 3 – Capitalism Quo Vadis Conference on Ethics in Business – Corporate Culture & Spirituality European Parliament, Brussels 14th November 2008

Fiduciary Duty and the Atmospheric Trust

This book explores the application of concepts of fiduciary duty or public trust in responding to the policy and governance challenges posed by policy problems that extend over multiple terms of government or even, as in the case of climate change, human generations. The volume brings together a range of perspectives including leading international thinkers on questions of fiduciary duty and public trust, Australia's most prominent judicial advocate for the application of fiduciary duty, top law scholars from several major universities, expert commentary from an influential climate policy think-tank and the views of long-serving highly respected past and present parliamentarians. The book presents a detailed examination of the nature and extent of fiduciary duty, looking at the example of Australia and having regard to developments in comparable jurisdictions. It identifies principles that could improve the accountability of political actors for their responses to major problems that may extend over multiple electoral cycles.

Dark numbers: challenges in measuring human trafficking

Over the last decade nations around the world have renewed their efforts to address the problem of human trafficking, following the introduction of the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. In Australia and the United States, legislators sought to quantify and characterise the human trafficking phenomenon, seeking to answer the question — how large is the problem of trafficking? This article explores the attempts of legislators in Australia and the United States to determine how many victims are trafficked into their countries, highlighting the significant uncertainty that still surrounds data on human trafficking. The challenges researchers face in measuring human trafficking are also explored. These challenges include disputes over the definition of a trafficking victim, the limitations of research using sampling to measure the trafficked population, and the mischaracterisation of the trafficking problem as a result of politicisation of the trafficking debate and a focus on trafficking for sexual exploitation versus other forms of labour. This article argues that in the absence of reliable data on trafficking, policy is often informed by misleading or false information.

Introduction: Is a General Theory of Violence Possible?

"There once was a man who aspired to be the author of the general theory of holes. When asked ‘What kind of hole—holes dug by children in the sand for amusement, holes dug by gardeners to plant lettuce seedlings, tank traps, holes made by road makers?’ he would reply indignantly that he wished for a general theory that would explain all of these. He rejected ab initio the—as he saw it—pathetically common-sense view that of the digging of different kinds of holes there are quite different kinds of explanations to be given; why then he would ask do we have the concept of a hole? Lacking the explanations to which he originally aspired, he then fell to discovering statistically significant correlations; he found for example that there is a correlation between the aggregate hole-digging achievement of a society as measured, or at least one day to be measured, by econometric techniques, and its degree of techno- logical development. The United States surpasses both Paraguay and Upper Volta in hole-digging; there are more holes in Vietnam than there were. These observations, he would always insist, were neutral and value-free. This man’s achievement has passed totally unnoticed except by me. Had he however turned his talents to political science, had he concerned himself not with holes, but with modernization, urbanization or violence, I find it difficult to believe that he might not have achieved high office in the APSA." (MacIntyre 1971, 260)