Law, Financial Stability and Economic Development: With Special References to the Financial Regulatory Structures in Hong Kong, Mainland China, the UK and the US

Abstract

After the catastrophic financial crisis in of 2008, a significant portion of the legal academia in the globe has started to concentrate on the interrelationship between law, financial stability and economic development. Through reviewing the voluminous literature in this field, it is figured out that the scope of law has been largely confined to strengthening regulation of the pre-crisis unbundled derivative transactions and enhancing cooperation among sovereign States by making formal sources of international law. Few discussions have been made to scrutinize the existing regulatory structures for the domestic financial markets of sovereign countries and demonstrate the potential possessed by informal international law in reinforcing the efficacy of these regulatory structures. By comparing the financial regulatory structures in Hong Kong, Mainland China, the UK and the US and the core principles of the BIS, the IOSCO and the IAIS, this article attempts to fill in the above research gap to some extent.