New Tech v. New Deal: Fintech as a Systemic Phenomenon

IF 1.2 1区 社会学 Q1 LAW
S. Omarova
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引用次数: 37

Abstract

36 Yale Journal on Regulation 735 (2019).Fintech is the hottest topic in finance today. Recent advances in cryptography, data analytics, and artificial intelligence are visibly “disrupting” traditional methods of delivering financial services and conducting financial transactions. Less visibly, fintech is also changing the way we think about finance: The rise of fintech is gradually recasting our collective understanding of the financial system as simply another sphere of normatively neutral information technology and objective computer science. By making financial transactions faster, cheaper, and more easily accessible, fintech seems to promise a micro-level “win-win” solution to the financial system’s many ills.This Article challenges such narratives and presents an alternative account of fintech as a systemic, macro-level phenomenon. Grounding the analysis of evolving fintech trends in a broader institutional context, the Article exposes the normative and political significance of the current fintech moment. It argues that the arrival of fintech enables a potentially decisive shift in the underlying public-private balance of powers, competencies, and roles in the financial system.In developing this argument, the Article makes three principal scholarly contributions. First, it introduces the concept of the New Deal settlement in finance: a fundamental political arrangement, in force for nearly a century, pursuant to which profit-seeking private actors retain control over allocating capital and generating financial risks, while the sovereign public bears responsibility for maintaining systemic financial stability. Second, the Article advances a novel conceptual framework for understanding the deep-seated financial dynamics that have eroded the New Deal settlement in recent decades. In particular, it offers a working taxonomy of principal mechanisms that both (a) enable private market actors to continuously synthesize tradable financial assets and scale up trading activities, and (b) undermine the public’s ability to manage the resulting system-wide risks. Finally, the Article shows how and why specific fintech applications – cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technologies, digital crowdfunding, and robo-advising – are poised to amplify the effect of these destabilizing mechanisms, and thus potentially exacerbate the tensions and imbalances in today’s financial markets and the broader economy. It is this potential that renders fintech a public policy challenge of the highest order.
新科技与新政:金融科技作为一种系统现象
36《耶鲁大学管理学报》(2019)。金融科技是当今金融界最热门的话题。密码学、数据分析和人工智能的最新进展正在明显“颠覆”传统的提供金融服务和进行金融交易的方法。不那么明显的是,金融科技也在改变我们对金融的看法:金融科技的兴起正在逐渐重塑我们对金融体系的集体理解,将其简单地视为规范中立的信息技术和客观计算机科学的另一个领域。通过使金融交易更快、更便宜、更容易获得,金融科技似乎有望为金融体系的许多弊病提供微观层面的“双赢”解决方案。本文挑战了这样的叙述,并提出了金融科技作为一种系统性宏观现象的另一种解释。本文在更广泛的制度背景下分析了不断发展的金融科技趋势,揭示了当前金融科技时刻的规范和政治意义。报告认为,金融科技的到来可能会对金融体系中潜在的公私权力、能力和角色平衡产生决定性的转变。在展开这一论点的过程中,本文做出了三个主要的学术贡献。首先,它引入了金融领域的新政解决方案的概念:这是一项基本的政治安排,实施了近一个世纪,根据该安排,追求利润的私人行为者保留了对资本配置和产生金融风险的控制权,而主权公众则承担着维护系统金融稳定的责任。其次,本文提出了一个新的概念框架,用于理解近几十年来侵蚀新政解决方案的深层次金融动态。特别是,它提供了主要机制的工作分类,这些机制(a)使私人市场参与者能够不断地合成可交易的金融资产并扩大交易活动,以及(b)破坏公众管理由此产生的全系统风险的能力。最后,本文展示了特定的金融科技应用——加密货币、分布式账本技术、数字众筹和机器人咨询——如何以及为什么会放大这些不稳定机制的影响,从而可能加剧当今金融市场和更广泛经济中的紧张和不平衡。正是这种潜力使金融科技成为最高级别的公共政策挑战。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
2.80
自引率
3.60%
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