OBJECTIVES AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION’S 1999 ACTION PLAN CONCERNING THE FRAMEWORK FOR FINANCIAL MARKETS

The European Commission’s Financial Services Action Plan, FSAP, (1999) is a key document in the political process of building a common framework for financial markets in the EU area. The FSAP and financial regulation at the EU Member state level are derived from a complicated mix of policy objectives. Decisions to regulate are based on a very broad spectrum of analysis and research. Important analytical contributions come from financial economics and company and capital market law. Within the framework of the stated policy objectives, both economists and jurists have analysed the need for and the likely effect of different types of regulatory instruments. The aim of the present paper is to combine regulatory objectives and research contributions in a systematic way. The classification system developed by the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) is applied to categorize the relevant research contributions. Observations in a so-called “Objectives/Research Category Matrix” based on a large sample of references reveal some interesting patterns. There seems to be some systematic differences in the objective orientation of researchers belonging to different JEL-categories. Different academic disciplines approach issues of regulation in different ways and with different analytical paradigms. Researchers whose publications are classified in JEL-categories G. Financial Economics have particularly focused on protection against systemic risk, ensuring company efficiency and ensuring market efficiency. Researchers belonging to JEL-category K. Law and Economics are primarily concerned with the objective of ensuring company efficiency, market efficiency and to some extent stakeholder protection.