Rethinking Modern Financial Ecology and Its Regulatory Implications

Abstract

Our understanding of the modern financial market significantly shapes the way we regulate it. Sensible and effective regulation will not be achieved if that understanding is misplaced or premised on faulty assumptions. All three mainstream market theories, Efficient Market Hypothesis, Behavioural Finance and Adaptive Market Hypothesis, fail, to some extent, to accurately reflect the complete features of modern financial ecology, and they overlook the unique roles played by regulators, the financial market infrastructures, and the financial gatekeepers. This paper views financial markets as an adaptive, complex ecosystem, and re-explores the distinctive roles played by the various groups of market participant. It re-conceptualizes the comprehensive landscape of modern financial ecology by exploring the mainstream market hypotheses, and by adapting, and applying, to them the insights of complexity science.