The UN Declaration of 24 September 2012 reaffirming the commitment of Heads of State and Government to the Rule of Law reflects the current uneasiness accompanying the application of just the concept. This short paper argues that it is due to discrepancies in its worldwide understanding and to...

The English law of mortgage is remarkable. Its complexity rivals that of Euler's equation and could, in the same manner, be described as ‘beautiful'. Its stubborn retention of archaic terms and concepts operates in sharp contrast to the ever changing world of finance which it inhabits. Most...

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, Congress has sought to regulate the proprietary trading activities of Wall Street banks. The Volcker Rule, passed into law as section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Act, bans proprietary trading for deposit-taking banks and bank holding companies with...

Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) is a relatively new tool that has been introduced into the legislative system of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. To streamline its implementation, all three countries have decided to conduct a pilot RIA in a very similar area — administrative...

When things go wrong, it is always good to find someone to blame. As the credit crisis started to unfold in 2007, credit rating agencies (“CRAs”) emerged as the villain – or scapegoat, one might say – for commentators and regulators alike. To sum up, observers accused CRAs of doing a...

The EU recently established new supranational financial supervision authorities — ESAs — capable of adopting binding supervisory decisions. The upgraded regulatory framework also inaugurated judicial review by a newly established Board of Appeal and the Court of Justice against these...

Regulators around the world are attempting to reconcile the changing demands of 21st century economies with the insights two schools of thought, New Governance and Behavioural Economics, are offering. The common emerging theme, expressed by the UK and American administrations as well as in other...

During the last decade, many Brazilian consumers left the lower strata of the socioeconomic pyramid and ascended to the middle class. A large part of this expanding social mobility came from increased access to credit. Easing the access to credit is considered by classic economic theory an...

Although the United States has not established a much-needed and increasingly discussed national catastrophe policy, most significant points in current risk management strategies involve significant federal coordination and control. The authors suggest that a regulatory model that defers to the...