The Construction of Knowledge in Financial Regulation

Abstract

Many individual financial regulations are well-studied and the rule-making process has received some scholarly attention. This paper considers a higher-level and less-studied question: what kind of knowledge forms financial regulation? Probing this question reveals a fundamentally epistemological activity involving the construction of abstract categories and internal rhetorics relating them by regulators; recurrent attempts to define valid translations into this system by the regulated; and the policing of this purported compliance. An analysis of the resulting 'truth game' uncovers the mechanisms by which financial regulations and financial regulators enable, promulgate and constitute each other.

Keywords: Regulation, financial regulation, financial law, securities law, Securities and Exchange Commission, administrative law