Innovation-Framing Regulation

This article provides insights into the effective regulation of private sector innovation. It coins a term—“innovation-framing regulation”—to describe a particular quality of much of financial regulation in the recent era. It sketches a particular financial innovation (securitization and the marketing of securitized assets on derivatives markets), and describes three regulatory interactions having to do with that innovation. I identify three key assumptions that are ripe for re-evaluation: the notion that private sector innovation is beneficial, virtually by definition; the assumption that the regulatory moment is the crucial moment in regulatory design; and the belief that regulation somehow sits outside innovation and can be untouched by it. I argue that effective regulation of private sector innovation requires a clearer and more nuanced understanding of innovation, and engagement with the normative choices underpinning innovation-framing regulation.