The Global Finance and Law Initiative: Retheorizing the Relationship Between Law and Markets


This research project constructs a new theory of the relationship between law and finance through using case studies drawn from the global financial crisis as analytical windows for determining deficiencies of established theoretical frameworks

The 2008 economic crisis shocked not only the global financial system and its governance structures but also the theories that have framed analyses of the operation and regulation of markets. However, the intellectual implications of the crisis reach far beyond the discipline of economics. Over the last several decades the neoclassical framework infused all areas of the social sciences and manifested in forms such as the rational choice perspective in sociology or public choice theory in political science. The crisis has opened an analytical window for critiquing existing paradigms and developing new theories on law and markets that can fundamentally shift the social sciences. This project uses case studies to begin constructing a new theory capturing the relationship between law and markets