This article explains the roots of financial crises in one of the oldest and most fundamental problems of commercial law: hidden leverage. Common law courts wrestled with this problem for centuries and developed a time – tested solution: the doctrine of secret liens. If the debtor becomes...

This paper investigates patterns in product market regulation across 34 OECD and 21 non-OECD countries, using an updated and revised version of the OECD’s indicators of product market regulation (PMR). The analysis shows that liberalisation of product markets has further slowed over the past...

We investigate the economic and technological determinants inducing entrepreneurs to establish ventures with the purpose of reinventing financial technology (fintech). We find that countries witness more fintech startup formations when the latest technology is readily available, capital markets...

To date, government procurement has been effectively carved out of the main multilateral rules of the WTO system. This paper examines the systemic and other ramifications of this exclusion, from both an economic and a legal point of view. In addition to relevant elements of the WTO Agreements,...

This paper proposes and empirically validates four theories of why legal origin influences growth and welfare through finance. It is a natural extension of "Law and finance: why does legal origin matter?" by Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirgüç-Kunt and Ross Levine (2003). We find only partial support...

The Internet has become an integral part of the everyday life of households, firms and governments. Its proper functioning over the long run is therefore crucial for economic growth and people’s wellbeing more generally. The success of the Internet depends on its openness and the confidence of...

This legal contribution reflects on the changing role of central banks in the global economy by observing three interconnected developments: globalization, regionalization and the global financial crisis. The hypothesis at the outset is that these developments which are to a considerable extent...

This article explores how the theory of, “responsive regulation,” might guide historical inquiry into the American origins of the global financial crisis. Part I of the article briefly lays out some key ideas of the, “responsive regulation,” literature, and sketches how advocates of this...

The protracted international dispute on currency manipulation has exposed the weakness of the contemporary international economic law framework in regulating the sovereign intervention on foreign exchange rate. The legal mandate of the WTO on currency manipulation remains questionable and the...