Description
Book SynopsisThis book is about what Mark Carney has called ‘the social licence for financial markets’ and how it can point us towards a more sustainable future. Author David Rouch argues that what it reveals contrasts sharply with the usual portrayals of markets as places of unrestrained financial self-interest. Drawing attention to a more complex reality and the presence of justice-focused aspirations in finance can positively impact individual, institutional, and systemic behaviour: change, not imposed by regulators, but emerging from the very substance of market relationships.
The finance sector should have a key role in addressing humanity’s increasingly pressing sustainability challenges. Yet the relationship between finance and society has not recovered from the 2008 crisis and the scandals and austerity that followed. The Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallout is sharpening some of the issues and creating new ones. Recognising that financial markets operate subject to a social licence has the potential to galvanise market participants in tackling these challenges, strengthening social solidarity on which markets also depend, and to provide coordinates for navigating a way through the post-pandemic social, political and economic landscape.
Trade Review“This book is an important contribution to that debate that deserves to be widely read.” (Bruce Davis, Financial World, November 2020-January 2021)
Table of Contents1. The Great Re-evaluation: Reaching for an EndPart I In the Beginning, an End2. People, Firms, Markets, Behaviour3. The Ends of Desire in Financial MarketsPart II The Social Licence and Justice4. The Social Licence for Financial Markets5. Realising Justice: the Role of Written StandardsPart III In the End, a Beginning6. Behaviour—Change in Practice7. Policy Implications8. Conclusion—Not an End, but a Beginning
