There are still many uncertainties with regard to whether virtual currencies will eventually replace fiat money or whether these two institutions will be functioning in tandem. Virtual currencies are still without legal tender status, but it is established that virtual currency can be utilised as a medium of exchange in circumstances where parties permit for its use. Moreover, this novel technological phenomenon engenders a myriad of risks and legal implications that are not comprehensively dealt with by regulators either locally or internationally. This dissertation investigates the risks associated with virtual currencies, the regulatory approaches taken by different jurisdictions as well as the prospects for virtual currency to function as a medium of exchange. / Mini Dissertation (LLM (Banking Law))--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Mercantile Law / LLM (Banking Law) / Unrestricted

Financial regulation is a topical; issue particularly its potential negative impact on economic growth. Literature indicates that researchers have divided opinions on the subject. There is a group that believes higher financial regulation will deter economic growth and another group that believes that current financial regulations should be increased. The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of financial regulation on economic growth in developing countries.The study was undertaken by formulating one overall research question, which was supported by two hypotheses. The study employed quantitative methodology to analyse the data. Secondary data was collected on a sample of ten developing countries in three regions (Africa, Americas and Asia Pacific). Time series data was obtained on the following variables: gross domestic products, inflation rate, interest rate, unemployment rate and financial freedom index. The data was initially analysed using trend analysis, which was followed by regression analysis. Trend analysis indicates that financial regulation is good for economic growth in developing countries. Financial regulation was measured by the financial freedom index and economic growth was measured by growth in gross domestic products.The results show a negative correlation between the two variables. When strict financial regulations are imposed, growth in gross domestic product increases. This relationship was tested statistically to quantify the percentage of change in gross domestic product attributable to financial regulation as well as its significance. It was discovered that financial regulation on its own can explain up to 17.8% of the change in gross domestic product and is a very significant explanatory variable. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Using a panel data set of 62 countries from 1995 through 2013, the effects of financial openness on changes in entrepreneurship rates in the economy are estimated for emerging and developed markets. Controlling for the effects of political risk in conjunction with capital controls, capital controls have a negative effect on entrepreneurialism in emerging market countries, but can have a positive effect on entrepreneurialism in developed markets. The imposition of financial controls have a greater effect in magnitude in developed markets than in emerging markets, indicating that development of the internal financial system plays a role in extenuating the effects of capital controls. The effect of the imposition of financial controls is not uniform across the various financial instruments. In particular, the imposition of capital controls on derivatives and real estate in developed markets is associated with a negative effect on entrepreneurialism, unlike for other financial instruments in developed markets. However, in emerging markets, the effects on entrepreneurialism of financial controls seems to be more uniform when controlling for the interaction of political risk and financial controls. In controlling for the effects of political risk on financial liberalization, the effects of financial controls between emerging markets and developed markets are not the same. In general, the imposition of financial controls in emerging markets is associated with a decline in entrepreneurialism, while the imposition of such controls in developed markets is associated with an increase in entrepreneurial activity.

<p> International financial regulation has increasingly focused on 'risk-based' management over the last decade. In general, risk is a term embodied with the notion of an uncertain future and a belief that the use of rational and calculative practices can reveal, measure, and manage these potential futures. This dissertation argues that at the macro level financial governance is permeated with a tension between two overarching discourses of risk-risk as an economic necessity and risk as a danger or threat. These two macro-discourses influence and/or legitimize various courses of action in a general way that in some respects is similar to the role played by ideas in other approaches. However these macro-discourses do not only guide the regulatory actors involved. By drawing out the links between these discourses and the performative risk practices they constitute, this dissertation reveals how risk discourses operate in an ongoing way through the practical implementation of regulatory strategies, which implicitly or explicitly play one macro-discourse off the other. Moreover, the risk practices created, which include mundane, routine, and highly technical activities, work to construct the everyday performance offinancial governance and the identities of those actors included and excluded from the system.</p> <p> To examine this relationship, the dissertation looks at the international governance efforts of three financial areas: banking capital adequacy requirements, reinsurance and collective investment schemes. In the process, it reveals that the focus on risk in regulation creates some generalities across the realm of financial governance, but also that the micro-practices, identities and power produced in each arena are distinctive. It argues that by interrogating the macro-discursive constructions of risk and the practices and identities constituted through them, key tensions are revealed which, at least in part, explain the structure and goals of international financial regulation.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis focuses on the search for accountability processes related to the standard setting powers of a transnational regulatory network that operates in the highly complex and uncertain environment of global finance: the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). The thesis draws upon and builds on two main resources: the academic literature from international law, political science, international relations and public administration about the concept of accountability and- as a theoretical framework - Niklas Luhmann's idea of communication which suggests that communication is a selection process rather than a process of transmission. In this selection process the idea of meaning in the sense of a common understanding is paramount. The analysis focuses on the key milestones of the Basel Committee's work: the Concordat, as well as the Basel I, Basel II and Basel III accords. The thesis also draws on a qualitative original data set compiled by the author, made up of extracts of discussions of the Basel Committee's work in the international financial journalistic press. Additionally, official documents and press releases from the BCBS were coded by classifying them into common themes (such as minimum capital standards or the delay on the implementation timetable of Basel III) and the thesis' analysis assessed whether they formed part of an accountability process (i.e., whether they asked for an account, responded to an accountability claim, judged an accountability claim and referred to which consequences should follow the judgement). On the basis of this thematic analysis the thesis identifies five accountability processes in relation to the work of the Basel Committee based on communication. These revolve around the standards for minimum capital requirements in Basel II, the standards for debt exposures of banks lending to small and medium size enterprises, the over complexity of the Basel III accord, the alleged detrimental effects of the Basel accord for US banks, and the delay in the schedule to implement Basel III. Drawing on Luhmann's ideas about communicative events, the thesis develops a novel account of communicative accountability that explains accountability as the decentred and flexible communicative interaction between an accountor and an accountee whose communications have to resonate with an epistemic community. This epistemic community plays the role of a social system in which expectations about the exercise of regulatory powers of the Basel Committee are managed. The thesis argues that this process of communicative accountability can be empirically traced and that it is significantly facilitated by reliance on a shared language and expertise of a common professional community to which both the Basel Committee and a wider professional community belong to. The thesis argues that while the concept of communicative accountability developed through the research can be used to identify processes which seek to render TRNs like the BCBS accountable, these processes may also lack sufficient legitimacy, in the sense of formal power from a recognized source such as a state or an international organization underpinning these accountability processes. Increased legitimacy matters because it would enhance certainty in an accountability process and therefore, help to identify more clearly the legitimate accountor and to uphold his or her authority to ask for the account. Hence, as a whole, this thesis contributes towards the quest for alternative ways of understanding and improving accountability mechanisms in relation to the exercise of regulatory powers by globalized regulatory institutions in a transnational sphere such as the BCBS.

The debates on whether or not to regulate micro lending have shifted to finding the appropriate regulatory models. This is because countries are in agreement that being part of the greater financial services sector, micro lending plays an important role in the economic and social development of the citizens as it enables the poor to have access to credit and better their lives. To this end, Botswana has not fallen short of this global trend. Micro lending regulation plays an important role in maintaining the financial safety and soundness of any country’s financial sector. If not properly regulated, the micro lending industry can lead to undesirable incidents like financial crisis and suicide cases as it was the case in the State of Andhra Pradesh of India where borrowers were over-indebted leading them to commit suicide. Since there is not a perfect regulatory model, countries have over the years formulated regulatory frameworks for micro lending. Some of the laws failed and created more problems than they were in fact intended to solve like the 2010 financial crisis in India. In 2008 Parliament of Botswana enacted the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority Act in order to regulate (NBFIs), including micro lenders. The primary purpose of this study is to scrutinize the mechanisms in place for the regulation and supervision of micro lenders in Botswana in light of those set internationally and subsequently deducing their effectiveness or lack thereof. The comparative analysis will focus on South Africa and India’s State of Andhra Pradesh. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The debates on whether or not to regulate micro lending have shifted to finding the appropriate regulatory models. This is because countries are in agreement that being part of the greater financial services sector, micro lending plays an important role in the economic and social development of the citizens as it enables the poor to have access to credit and better their lives. To this end, Botswana has not fallen short of this global trend. Micro lending regulation plays an important role in maintaining the financial safety and soundness of any country’s financial sector. If not properly regulated, the micro lending industry can lead to undesirable incidents like financial crisis and suicide cases as it was the case in the State of Andhra Pradesh of India where borrowers were over-indebted leading them to commit suicide. Since there is not a perfect regulatory model, countries have over the years formulated regulatory frameworks for micro lending. Some of the laws failed and created more problems than they were in fact intended to solve like the 2010 financial crisis in India. In 2008 Parliament of Botswana enacted the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority Act in order to regulate (NBFIs), including micro lenders. The primary purpose of this study is to scrutinize the mechanisms in place for the regulation and supervision of micro lenders in Botswana in light of those set internationally and subsequently deducing their effectiveness or lack thereof. The comparative analysis will focus on South Africa and India’s State of Andhra Pradesh. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The SEC relies heavily on ‘no-fault’ settlements in its enforcement, where targets avoid costly litigation by accepting sanctions without admitting or denying fault. This policy is argued to enable the agency to pursue greater numbers of violators. However, opponents argue that no-fault sanctions may be less effective, reducing fines to a ‘cost of business’. In an experiment, I examine the effects of fault assignment on managers’ cost perceptions, ethical framing and compliance. I manipulate the presence of fault assignment in prospective sanctions, and additionally manipulate sanction strength and sanction target - attributes that commonly vary in sanctions and which may interact with fault assignment. I find that all manipulated sanction attributes increase managers’ cost perceptions, and that managers’ cost perceptions are associated with greater compliance frequency and compliance quality. I also find that managers facing fault assignment in manager-targeted sanction conditions perceive their compliance differently – as an ethical, rather than economic choice. Consequently, these managers comply more frequently with costly regulations and select higher quality compliance than do managers in manager-targeted no-fault conditions. Targeting firms with sanctions also increases managers’ ethical perceptions, but adding fault to firm-targeted sanctions does not further increase ethical perceptions or compliance. My findings are consistent with sanctions facilitating greater ethical awareness and compliance when fault targets managers or when sanctions target firms, and with ethical awareness facilitating greater compliance. Supplementary analysis suggests that results are stronger among individuals high in ‘dark triad’ personality traits (narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy), suggesting that findings generalize to subpopulations thought to be high in dark triad traits such as firm managers (O’Reilly et al. 2014).

A presente pesquisa busca analisar os efeitos da regulação financeira sobre diferentes aspectos do setor de microfinanças. Para tanto identifica, a partir da literatura especializada, hipóteses que apontam para quatro variáveis como as mais sensíveis aos efeitos da regulação e supervisão. São elas a sustentabilidade financeira das instituições, seu alcance em relação ao número de clientes e do nível de renda deste, a adimplência observada em seus portfólios e a estrutura do setor de microfinanças em termos da quantidade e dos tipos de instituições existentes. Argumenta-se que cada elemento da regulação possui um efeito distinto sobre um ou mais desses aspectos, que são colocados à prova em dois estudos de caso. O primeiro é o caso brasileiro, no qual a evolução da regulamentação parece ter favorecido, até certo ponto, o predomínio de instituições públicas e no setor de microcrédito. Por sua vez, a regulamentação mexicana teria atuado no sentido oposto, favorecendo a formação de um grande número de instituições privadas, muitas das quais de pequeno porte. / This research aims at analyzing the effects of financial regulation over different aspects of the microfinance sector. Therefore, at first it identifies on the specialized literature hypothesis that point to four variables considered more sensible to the effects of financial regulation and supervision. Those are the financial sustainability of institutions, their outreach in terms of breadth as well as depth, the levels of loan losses in their portfolios and the very own structure of the microfinance sector regarding the quantity and the types of existing institutions. We argue that each aspect of financial regulation presents distinct effects over the variables above, and we put them to test by employing two case studies. The first focuses on Brazil, where the regulatory evolution appears to have benefited, up to a certain point, the dominance of public institutions on the microfinance sector. On the other hand, we look at the Mexican case, where we can find a great number of small sized private institutions. Therefore, financial regulation seems to have had so far the opposite effect it had in Brazil.

What explains the shift towards greater direct public oversight of financial markets in international financial regulation that has characterized the response to the global financial crisis of 2007-2010? Over this period, the main international financial regulatory bodies have abandoned the market-based mechanisms that had informed their approach towards the regulation of different financial domains in the years before the crisis and significantly expanded the perimeter of state-based regulation. However, the extent and the timing of this shift cannot be regarded only as the by-product of the crisis, nor they can be explained by the existing interpretations of the political determinants of international regulatory policies. This study builds upon existing state-centric explanations of international regulatory policies, but it goes beyond these works by exploring how the preferences of the most influential countries in response to the crisis have been influenced by variations in the degree of public salience of different financial domains. More specifically, this study argues that the lasting increase in the public salience of financial regulatory policies in the US and different European countries since the last quarter of 2008 has created strong incentives for elected officials in these countries to challenge the market-based approach that had emerged in the decade and half before the crisis and to directly interfere in the international regulatory agenda. In order to explain this shift, this study will analyse the evolution in the international governance of three sets of markets and institutions that have occupied an important position in the international regulatory agenda in recent years: 1) OTC derivatives; 2) rating agencies; 3) hedge funds. Besides making an empirical contribution to the literature on the politics of international financial regulation, this study also contributes theoretically to this literature by deepening our understanding of the nexus between international regulatory coordination and domestic public opinion.