Decrypting the Signs of Regulatory Competition in Regulating Cryptoassets

The icos market has challenged financial regulators in terms of determining fit with existing regimes and consideration for regulatory reform. Regulatory divergences have emerged in a number of jurisdictions and we discuss three dominant approaches in relation to hegemonic, self-regulatory and enabling regimes. These reflect different assumptions and regulators’ understandings of the cryptoasset industry, and we argue that the ‘terms for competition’ in relation to supply and demand side needs are still being discovered and are incomplete. This provides a unique opportunity for regulators to jettison familiar assumptions in relation to corporatized securities issuers or institutional investors in order to discover what governance needs are truly at stake. This may pose challenges for coherence with existing regulation but coherence should not itself be an obstacle for learning and potentially, reform. We also argue that signs of international regulatory coordination in relation to the Libra project are not necessarily reflective of a wider trend for the cryptoasset industry. This is because regulators can apply existing and familiar financial regulation paradigms more easily to the Libra Association, in particular its leading founding member Facebook. The cryptoasset market is still likely to give rise to diversity and should facilitate the discovery of new bases for regulatory thinking and policy, uncoordinated or otherwise.

The European Response to COVID-19: From Regulatory Emulation to Regulatory Coordination?

Due to its borderless nature, COVID-19 has been a matter of common European interest since its very first detection on the continent. Yet this pandemic outbreak has largely been handled as an essentially national matter. Member States adopted their own different, uncoordinated and at times competing national responses according to their distinctive risk analysis frameworks, with little regard1 for the scientific and management advice provided by the European Union (EU), notably its dedicated legal framework for action on cross-border health threats.2 To justify such an outcome as the inevitable consequence of the EU’s limited competence in public health is a well-rehearsed yet largely inaccurate argument3 that calls for closer scrutiny.

Differentiating Coordination and Overlap in Banking Regulation

This chapter explores the adverse consequences of conflating the overlap/distinct and coordination/independence dimensions of regulatory authority by focusing on Congress's restructuring of federal banking regulation after the crash of 2008 in the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. Legislators and financial experts concluded that excessive overlap before 2010 in prudential regulatory authority created three problems: (1) wasteful duplication of effort, (2) inconsistent and conflicting regulatory treatment of financial institutions, and (3) regulatory arbitrage that prompted a race to the bottom among prudential regulators, which increased the risk of systemic failures. Congress addressed the first two problems by requiring greater regulatory coordination, but the chapter contends that the creation of more distinct authority, either substantively or functionally, may have been preferable in light of the weak form of coordination mandated by Dodd-Frank. Dodd-Frank's response to the third problem was misguided for a different reason. Banking regulation experts and policymakers attributed arbitrage to excessive overlap, when in fact it arises from distinct authority among banking regulators. As a result, Congress failed to consider an option that might have been superior to enhanced but non-hierarchical coordination-the creation of more overlap to prevent financial institutions from choosing exclusive regulation by the weakest prudential regulator.

Genetic basis for coordination of meiosis and sexual structure maturation in Cryptococcus neoformans

In the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans, sex can benefit its pathogenicity through production of meiospores, which are believed to offer both physical and meiosis-created lineage advantages for its infections. Cryptococcus sporulation occurs following two parallel events, meiosis and differentiation of the basidium, the characteristic sexual structure of the basidiomycetes. However, the circuit integrating these events to ensure subsequent sporulation is unclear. Here, we show the spatiotemporal coordination of meiosis and basidial maturation by visualizing event-specific molecules in developing basidia defined by a quantitative approach. Monitoring of gene induction timing together with genetic analysis reveals co-regulation of the coordinated events by a shared regulatory program. Two RRM family regulators, Csa1 and Csa2, are crucial components that bridge meiosis and basidial maturation, further determining sporulation. We propose that the regulatory coordination of meiosis and basidial development serves as a determinant underlying the production of infectious meiospores in C. neoformans.

The drivers of regulatory networking: policy learning between homophily and convergence

The literature on transnational regulatory networks identified interdependence as their main rationale, downplaying domestic factors. Typically, relevant contributions use the word “network” only metaphorically. Yet, informal ties between regulators constitute networked structures of collaboration, which can be measured and explained. Regulators choose their frequent, regular network partners. What explains those choices? This article develops an Exponential Random Graph Model of the network of European national energy regulators to identify the drivers of informal regulatory networking. The results show that regulators tend to network with peers who regulate similarly organised market structures. Geography and European policy frameworks also play a role. Overall, the British regulator is significantly more active and influential than its peers, and a divide emerges between regulators from EU-15 and others. Therefore, formal frameworks of cooperation (i.e. a European Agency) were probably necessary to foster regulatory coordination across the EU.