The Social Licence for Financial Markets : Reaching for the End and Why It Counts

This 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. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxv The Great Re-evaluation: Reaching for an End (David Rouch)....Pages 1-33 Front Matter ....Pages 35-35 People, Firms, Markets, Behaviour (David Rouch)....Pages 37-68 The Ends of Desire in Financial Markets (David Rouch)....Pages 69-109 Front Matter ....Pages 111-111 The Social Licence for Financial Markets (David Rouch)....Pages 113-161 Realising Justice: the Role of Written Standards (David Rouch)....Pages 163-220 Front Matter ....Pages 221-221 Behaviour—Change in Practice (David Rouch)....Pages 223-271 Policy Implications (David Rouch)....Pages 273-311 Conclusion—Not an End, but a Beginning (David Rouch)....Pages 313-314 Back Matter ....Pages 315-362