Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoning in the Global Financial Markets

COLLATERAL KNOWLEDGE: LEGAL REASONING IN THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL MARKETS, University of Chicago Press, 2011

Posted: 17 Apr 2011 Last revised: 23 Apr 2011

Date Written: April 15, 2011

Abstract

Who are the agents of financial regulation? Is good (or bad) financial governance merely the work of legislators and regulators? Here Annelise Riles argues that financial governance is made not just through top-down laws and policies but also through the daily use of mundane legal techniques such as collateral by a variety of secondary agents, from legal technicians and retail investors to financiers and academics and even computerized trading programs.

Drawing upon her ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Japanese derivatives market, Riles explores the uses of collateral in the financial markets as a regulatory device for stabilizing market transactions. How collateral operates, Riles suggests, is paradigmatic of a class of low-profile, mundane, but indispensable activities and practices that are all too often ignored as we think about how markets should work and be governed. Riles seeks to democratize our understanding of legal techniques, and demonstrate how these day-to-day private actions can be reformed to produce more effective forms of market regulation.

Suggested Citation

Riles, Annelise and Riles, Annelise, Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoning in the Global Financial Markets (April 15, 2011). COLLATERAL KNOWLEDGE: LEGAL REASONING IN THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL MARKETS, University of Chicago Press, 2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1811082

Annelise Riles (Contact Author)

Buffett Institute of Global Affairs ( email )

1902 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL
United States

Northwestern Law School ( email )

375 E. Chicago Ave
Chicago, IL 60611
United States
(312) 503-1018 (Phone)
(312) 988-6579 (Fax)

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