ABSTRACT
The aim of the present Chapter is to expand on the themes raised in Chapter 2 and provide empirical evidence on the conceptual and analytical frameworks introduced in Chapters 3 and 4. It tests the several hypotheses drawn in the previous chapters which related to the upsurge of international regulatory competition and the responses undertaken by US and UK financial markets prototypical tiers. This is, in our point of view, a marked trend of the post-Bretton Woods era, in which the welfare state was being replaced by the outward-looking leading competitive states. The themes running through the Sections of this Chapter offer answers to the following questions: (a) Did the US regulator lead the UK, and the global, trend for deregulation?; (b) What was the role of the Euromarkets in driving national regulatory change?; (c) What were the impacts of the combined mix of open regulatory competition and deregulation?; (d) Which levers caused them and who were their beneficiaries?; (e) Does the distribution of benefits as a result of capture matters?; and (0 Were there any systemic concerns on markets consequent to regulatory competition and reform? Most striking of all, are the tumultuous changes that the US and UK financial markets went through during the 1970s and 1980s. International regulatory competition has to a considerable extent converged financial regulatory practice and measures in both
countries, despite different cultural particularities and overall state-regulatory orientation towards deregulation (Abdelhamid, 2002).
