The future of financial markets and regulation: what strategy for Europe?

Summary This article provides insight into the future of financial markets and regulation in order to define what would be the best strategy for Europe. To preserve financial stability, Europe has to choose between financial opening and independently determining how to regulate finance. Among the five scenarios we defined, three achieve financial stability both inside and outside Europe. In terms of market efficiency, the multi-polar scenario is the best and the fragmentation scenario is the worst, since gains of integration depend on the size of the new capital market. Regarding sovereignty of regulation, fragmentation is the best scenario and the multi-polar scenario is the worst because it necessitates coordination at the global level which implies moving further away from respective national preferences. However, the more realistic option seems to be the regionalisation scenario: (i) this level of coordination seems much more realistic than the global one. (ii) the market should be of sufficient size to enjoy substantial benefits of integration. Nevertheless, the "European government" might gradually increase the degree of financial integration outside Europe in line with the degree of cooperation with the rest of the world.