Innovation and the State
Finance, Regulation, and Justice

In Innovation and the State, Cristie Ford examines the problem of innovation and its relationship to flexible regulation.

Cristie Ford (Author)

9781107644892, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 December 2017

368 pages, 10 b/w illus. 8 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.61 kg

'Many scholars, including Cristie Ford, have analyzed particular aspects of these phenomena, and how they matter to business and financial policy. What no one has done before, is build a broad philosophical construct for assessing these phenomena, so that policy makers might produce innovation-ready financial regulation. Professor Ford addresses regulatory design and structure, adaptability, and our own assumptions in ways that should help academics and policy makers think more precisely about optimal financial regulation in the future.' Frank Partnoy, University of San Diego, School of Law

From social media to mortgage-backed securities, innovation carries both risk and opportunity. Groups of people win, and lose, when innovation changes the ground rules. Looking beyond formal politics, this new book by Cristie Ford argues that we need to recognize innovation, and financial innovation in particular, as a central challenge for regulation. Regulation is at the leading edge of politics and policy in ways that we have not yet fully grasped. Seemingly innocuous regulatory design choices have clear and profound practical ramifications for many of our most cherished social commitments. Innovation is a complex phenomenon that needs to be understood not only in technical terms, but also in human ones. Using financial regulation as her primary example, Ford argues for a fresh approach to regulation, which recognizes innovation for the regulatory challenge that it is, and which binds our cherished social values and our regulatory tools ever more tightly together.

1. Innovation as a regulatory challenge: four stories
2. The history and rots of flexible regulation
3. Flexible regulation: key scholarship
4. Flexible regulation scholarship, 1980–2012
5. Flexible regulation and ideology
6. Innovation as regulatory subject
7. Seismic innovation
8. Innovation as sedimentary layers
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Banking law [LNPB]