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Regardless of economic cycles, financial regulation can be understood to be bound by an uncomfortable social policy trilemma. When faced with 1) providing market integrity, 2) fostering innovation, and 3) enabling financial inclusion, regulators have long been able to achieve, at best, only two of these three goals. Often the result of this trilemma are choices made in the name of consumer and investor protection, or innovation, that indirectly promote, enable or exacerbate wealth inequality by redlining capital markets or exposing the vulnerable to undue risk. In this article, I explain this trilemma and argue that addressing it will require novel innovations – from incorporating inclusion and innovation formally into regulatory mandates to upgrading existing offices of innovation, and creating offices of financial inclusion, to better navigate the tradeoffs inherent in the trilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the absence of a global regulator, transnational financial law emerges from the combination of national laws and the contractual practices developed by networks of private, public and hybrid private-public actors who contribute to the engineering and (self-)regulation of financial services largely through contracts. The theoretical question arises whether the process of transnationalisation might determine the dominance of economic rationality over other considerations, and whether a possible nationalisation of the transnational might instead produce a repoliticisation of the economic. Against this background, the article focuses on some of the instruments of transnational financial self-regulation, and considers how these interact ambivalently with local laws and judicial practices. By looking at the role of private law institutions and considering national litigation over financial contracts in different jurisdictions, the article reveals tensions between different objectives, ultimately raising questions about the function of commercial law both within and beyond the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores what finance can teach us about law's agency in global governance by tracing the global circulation of a specific technique, securitisation, from its origins in mortgage markets to its recent redeployment as a purported tool for ecological transition. It delves into legal practitioners' literature to investigate the various legal problems that had to be addressed, and the various legal solutions that were devised, for securitisation to spread globally. Through the examination of concrete technical problems that securitisation lawyers have had to solve—concerning the constitution of special purpose vehicles, the assignment of receivables, and the construction of new asset classes—I show that what has become globalised in the field of law and finance in the past decades is not primarily a set of transnational norms or authorities, but a repertoire of legal techniques, values, and rhetoric for framing and solving legal problems: a financialised legal knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes the multilateralization of judicial deference for reforming global financial law. It discusses manifestations of deference in jurisdictions, its design and shortcomings including unilateral perspective, deviating methods relating to comparability assessment, political influences, unequal access, market fragmentation and excessive costs. Factors to deference include sovereignty, open markets, competition policy, investor protection, financial stability and political economy.

This manuscript critically discusses the current implications of the scriptural injunctions against gharar and maysir. It elaborates how overlooking the features of the contemporary world and adopting a formalistic approach in Islamic jurisprudence have led to absurdity in the implication of the doctrines of gharar and maysir for Muslims' financial activities. The manuscript also underscores the necessity of adopting the maqāsid approach (purposivism) in Islamic jurisprudence. It propounds that the cogent concern of the injunctions could have been an initiative for Islamic scholars to establish an advanced contract law and to promote transparency in economic activities if a maqāsid approach had been adopted in Islamic jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A global transition to a low-carbon and climate resilient world will require trillions of dollars of finance and investment which raises questions, instrumental and normative, about how best to harness the private sector for public benefit and the optimal role for law and regulation in enabling climate finance. Taking Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement as its North Star, this article contributes a new and much-needed legal voice to the ontological discourse about climate finance. It makes explicit why and how national law and regulation are required to shape the rapidly evolving field of climate finance where sources and channels of capital are diversifying and multiplying out of necessity to meet Paris objectives. Specifically, it interweaves theories of regulatory capitalism and regulatory pluralism with empirical findings to present a novel Legal Analytical Framework for Climate Finance comprising financial mechanisms and facilitative modalities and the legal forms they can take in order to shine light on an emerging field; that of climate finance law and regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stablecoins are one of the cornerstones of the crypto world. They’ve attracted significant attention from major players over the past few years, ranging from Wall Street to kitchen-table investors, and even the White House. As a less volatile alternative to crypto-assets like bitcoin, stablecoins have the potential to change the way we make payments, unlock the groundwork needed for more blockchain-based applications, and even reorient the economy toward private money. But how stable are these stablecoins, really? Can they be relied upon in the way their many proponents claim? And how much of the popular beliefs about stablecoins match their realities? That’s where we come in. In this Article, we show, for the first time, just how unreliable and unstable this latest crypto innovation really can be. This Article makes two important contributions to the legal literature. First, the few and nascent works on stablecoins provide an imperfect and overly simplistic descriptive account of this market. Here, we explain the diversity of business models and issuer configurations that characterize the stablecoin landscape. But setting forth this taxonomy is more than merely upgrading descriptive accounts—creating this world map is critical to understanding the various cracks in the stablecoin market and the ways coinholders are likely to suffer harm when a stablecoin collapses. Second, through our novel study of key underlying documents, such as stablecoin-issuer corporate records, audit reports, protocol white papers, and user terms of service, this project reveals just how vulnerable stablecoin holders really are as they place their hopes (and sometimes their life savings) in this opaque and fragile market, rife with contradictory claims. In doing so, we break new ground by providing the first comprehensive private law analysis of stablecoins, including a menu of private ordering solutions aimed at creating transactional structures that would better protect stablecoin holders. By complementing the financial regulation and public law analysis in this nascent field, we lay the foundation for more inclusive and balanced normative solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the development of each society there are factors that are relevant and that the vast majority of societies in their evolution consider important; what perception and level of acceptance people have in political decisions that affect the economy in general and the pocket of each one in particular, are questions that should be raised at the time of generating a new law that affects the pocket the population in general. The RST (simple taxation regime) created from the year 2018 with the law 1943 (Financing Law), was made with the purpose of providing tax benefits and guarantees, trying to reduce the formal and substantial burdens at the time of declaring and contributing to the state through taxes, that raises the law, how this mechanism was developed in the population and what preception of acceptance had before the natural persons of the footwear sector that studied the norm or simply advised on how convenient it can get to do is the basis of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Follower notices, introduced in Finance Act 2014, can in certain avoidance situations be served on a taxpayer by HMRC (the UK revenue authority) where HMRC is of the opinion that the principles or reasoning of a decided case would deny the tax advantage in dispute. Such a taxpayer, who persists with the dispute, is then exposed to a tax‐geared penalty of up to 50 percent and can be required to pay the tax in dispute before the litigation is determined. The follower notice regime was considered by the UK Supreme Court in R (on the application of Haworth) v HMRC. The Supreme Court judgment addresses fundamental issues concerning access to the courts, the doctrine of precedent and balancing taxpayer rights against the public interest in the collection of taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the use of the national highway network of Lithuania, freight vehicles pay a fee of a fixed amount using the system of purchasing electronic vignettes (hereinafter referred to as e. vignettes). The tax is paid for a certain period (day, week, month, or year) regardless of the distance traveled by vehicles. Such a taxation model does not value the “polluter pays” principle enshrined in EU legislation and does not allow covering the damage caused by freight vehicles to the road infrastructure. Road maintenance and development program financing law no. VIII-2032 by the law on the amendment of articles 2, 6, 9 and appendices 2, 5, VĮ Lithuanian Road Directorate until 2023 must develop and implement an electronic road toll system that should replace the currently used e. vignettes. The article presents the currently tolled road network of Lithuania, the financial impact on the companies providing transportation services after the introduction of the electronic road toll system. The road toll systems operating in European countries and Lithuania and their operating technologies, marginal tariffs are analyzed, and a methodology is proposed, based on which it would be possible to fill in the list of currently tolled roads. A company providing cargo transportation services has been selected, and it has been determined how the amount of paid taxes will change after the implementation of the electronic road toll system on Lithuanian roads. It has been determined that after the introduction of EKRS for companies providing transportation services that carry out long-distance transport in Lithuania, the amount of taxes paid for using state roads will increase significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the European Union (EU) and Great Britain's reforms in sustainable finance and the potential of such regulatory initiatives to re-orient investment management practices. Topics discussed include institutional shareholder engagement, unreconciled and contesting narratives that underlie the expectations of shareholder engagement by institutions, and the Stewardship Code 2020 in Great Britain.

Machine learning methods based on AdaBoost have been widely applied to various classification problems across many mission-critical applications including healthcare, law and finance. However, there is a growing concern about the unfairness and discrimination of data-driven classification models, which is inevitable for classical algorithms including AdaBoost. In order to achieve fair classification, a novel fair AdaBoost (FAB) approach is proposed that is an interpretable fairness-improving variant of AdaBoost. We mainly investigate binary classification problems and focus on the fairness of three different indicators (i.e., accuracy, false positive rate and false negative rate). By utilizing a fairness-aware reweighting technique for base classifiers, the proposed FAB approach can achieve fair classification while maintaining the advantage of AdaBoost with negligible sacrifice of predictive performance. In addition, a hyperparameter is introduced in FAB to show preferences for the fairness-accuracy trade-off. An upper bound for the target loss function that quantifies error rate and unfairness is theoretically derived for FAB, which provides a strict theoretical support for the fairness-improving methods designed for AdaBoost. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated on three real-world datasets (i.e., Adult, COMPAS and HSLS) with respect to the three fairness indicators. The results are accordant with theoretic analyses, and show that (i) FAB significantly improves classification fairness at a small cost of accuracy compared with AdaBoost; and (ii) FAB approach can achieve low levels of fairness loss while maintaining high accuracy compared with state-of-the-art fair classification methods including equalized odds method, exponentiated gradient method, grid search reduction method and disparate mistreatment method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A contract generally only binds its parties. Security agreements, which create a security interest in specific personal property, stand out as a glaring exception to this rule. Under certain conditions, security interests not only bind the creditor and debtor, but also third-party creditors seeking to lend against the same collateral. To receive this extraordinary benefit, creditors must put the world on notice, usually by filing a financing statement with the state in which the debtor is located. Unfortunately, the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.) Article 9 filing system fails to provide actual notice to interested parties and introduces risk of heavy financial losses. To solve this problem, this Article introduces a smart-contract-based U.C.C.-1 form built using Lexon, an innovative new programming language that enables the development of smart contracts in English. The proposed “Lexon U.C.C. Financing Statement” does much more than merely replicate the financing statement in digital form; it also performs several U.C.C. rules so that, for the first time, the filing system works as intended. In demonstrating that such a system remains compatible with existing law, the Lexon U.C.C. Financing Statement also reveals important lessons about the interaction of technology and commercial law. This Article brings cryptolaw to the U.C.C. in three parts. Part I examines the failure of the U.C.C. Article 9 filing system to achieve actual notice and argues that blockchain technology and smart contracts can help the system function as intended. Part II introduces the Lexon U.C.C. Financing Statement, demonstrating how the computer code implements U.C.C. provisions. Part II also examines the goals that influenced the design of the Lexon U.C.C. Financing Statement, discusses the new programming language used to build it, and argues that the prototype could be used now, under existing law. Part III proposes five innovations for the Article 9 filing system enabled by the Lexon U.C.C. Financing Statement. Part III then considers the broader implications of the project for commercial law, legal research around smart contracts, and the interplay between technology-neutral law and a lawyer’s increasingly important duty of technological competence. Ultimately, by providing the computer code needed to build the Lexon U.C.C. Financing Statement, this Article demonstrates not only that crypto-legal structures are possible, but that they can simplify the law and make it more accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is uncontroversial that the Federal Election Commission fails to enforce campaign finance law adequately. This Note contributes to this discussion by analyzing more than four thousand summaries of standard enforcement proceedings to demonstrate the distribution of enforcement at the Federal Election Commission. This analysis indicates that the percentage of internally generated standard enforcement proceedings has declined precipitously, while the number of standard enforcement proceedings initiated each year has remained relatively constant. At present, the agency initiates very few standard enforcement proceedings. Instead, third-party enforcers fill the enforcement void. Third-party enforcers are members of the public that monitor political actors to detect and subsequently enforce campaign finance violations informally and formally. Often, these third-party enforcers are political actors themselves motivated by the pursuit of partisan political gain. Third-party enforcers can enforce serious campaign finance violations because of robust disclosure law and recent technological advancements that have rendered campaign finance information readily accessible to the public for the first time. In light of these changes, this Note evaluates the literature on thirdparty enforcement of campaign finance violations. This Note finds that the highly critical literature overlooks many of the benefits of thirdparty enforcement. While the practice has drawbacks, third-party enforcement is a much more forceful deterrent to potential violators than internally generated enforcement. Consequently, this Note argues that third-party enforcement advances fair federal elections, and the Federal Election Commission should alter its Enforcement Priority System to capitalize on third-party enforcement and improve enforcement at the agency overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conic finance is a new and exciting development in quantitative finance, which is widely applied to several topics in finance. The theory of conic finance extends the law of one price to the law of two prices, which yields closed forms for bid-ask prices of European options. In this paper, within the framework of conic finance, we derive effective, explicit, approximate formulas to estimate the bid-ask prices for the European discrete geometric average and arithmetic average Asian options. Finally, we give two examples to demonstrate and validate that the approximate closed-form solutions are efficient and accurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to identify the persons who legally qualify as related parties for the purposes of applying the new rules on related-party transactions introduced in the Capital Companies Law by Law 5/2021 transposing Directive 2017/828. Although the study focuses on the analysis of the related parties perimeter in listed companies, it also extensively addresses, by contrast or comparison, the identification of the related parties (to directors) in the general part of the Capital Companies Law, applicable to any type of capital company. The goal sought is to translate the complicated accounting language of the international accounting standards referred to in the special part into the common corporate language and, as far as possible, to harmonize to its dictates the treatment of the matter in the general part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues on financial inclusion and how the decline in cash transactions and gradual abolition of cash infrastructure will affect the financial inclusion of the marginalized members of society. Other topics include the regulatory trends in cash transactions, the structural regulation on cash distribution, and the issues on the access to financial services.

The article discusses the efforts to improve financial inclusion for small and medium enterprises (SEM), particularly on the access of SMEs to finance. Topics include the issues involving financial contracts between SMEs and their lending banks, relationship-based lending, and the measures to protect SMEs from their lenders like the U.S. Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019.

Financial regulators face the persistent issue of being challenged by financial innovations and regulatory arbitrage. This article argues that a functional approach of 'same activity, same risks, same rules' is potentially vague and insufficient, and does not provide clear guidance for regulators. By critically discussing the US Securities Exchange Commission's and UK Financial Conduct Authority's approaches to cryptoasset offers, the paper argues that whether and how regulators respond to financial innovation crucially depends on regulators' institutional structures. These structural limitations provide empowering as well as constraining aspects in relation to regulatory objectives and mandates, shaping financial regulators' responsiveness in different ways. The paper argues that an institutional account of regulatory responsiveness more accurately explains policy responses. The benefits and drawbacks of such policy responsiveness are also crucially shaped by these institutional structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Algerian legislator confirmed - after two years from the promulgation of Law No.16-09 - the continuity of the legislative policy in the investment sector in the same way previously adopted by Ordinance No.01-03.The finance laws continue to amend and complete the investment law with successive annual texts, which confirm the restrictive nature of the finance law, while the problems and results of the application of the finance laws are still lingering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World War II ended over three-quarters of a century ago, but there still remain prisoners of war. Before and during the war, the Nazis confiscated approximately 650,000 works of art--an "art theft" orchestrated by Adolf Hitler to rid society of Jewish art and artists and to collect worthy works to build his own art capital. Seventy-five years later, looted Holocaust-era artworks are still either undiscovered or in the possession of museums across the globe without proper ownership attribution or payment to Holocaust survivors or their heirs. There are modern remedies, such as the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2016, the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act of 2017, and the route of litigation, but victories, after prolonged and strenuous processes, are far and few between. The implementation of an adjudication panel and the global cooperation between the art community and the government are necessary steps down a long and winding path toward an effort to finally reach a semblance of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court interpreted the government's interest in preventing corruption as being limited to preventing quid pro quo--cash-for-votes--corruption. This narrow interpretation drastically circumscribed legislatures' abilities to regulate the financing of elections, in turn prompting scholars to propose a number of reforms for broadening the government interest in campaign finance cases. These reforms include urging the Court to recognize a new government interest such as political equality, to adopt a broader understanding of corruption, and to be more deferential to legislatures in defining corruption. Building upon that body of scholarship, this Article begins with a descriptive account of campaign finance jurisprudence that identifies various conceptions of corruption found in the case law. The Article then explains how these conceptions of corruption are animated by underlying disagreements about democracy and deference. More particularly, one group of Justices believes that preserving a robust process of public opinion formation is paramount in campaign finance cases, and that individual rights and political process concerns warrant intervention in defining corruption. The other group of Justices believes that the deployment of concentrated wealth in elections impairs legislative responsiveness to public opinion and that the Court should defer to legislative expertise in defining corruption. Having presented this account, the Article proposes a reform to accommodate both groups of Justices' concerns in campaign finance cases. This reform, which I call the Compromise Methodology, instructs the Court to defer to the legislature's understanding of the anticorruption interest when the campaign finance law in question protects either: (a) legislative responsiveness to public opinion; or (b) the process of public opinion formation. If the law protects neither of these concerns, then the Court intervenes and finds that the anticorruption interest cannot justify the law. Aside from this reframing of the anticorruption interest, the Compromise Methodology leaves the Court's ordinary decision-making process intact. The Court can still determine whether a campaign finance law impacts individual rights and whether a law is sufficiently tailored to the anticorruption interest to withstand scrutiny. I argue that the Compromise Methodology locates valuable middle ground in campaign finance jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains cryptoassets and their key features for governance at either the national or international level. Topics discussed include legal issues relating to cryptosassets, divergent national regulatory responses to the legal problems, and arguments for and against international governance of cryptoassets. Existing and possible future mechanisms of international governance are explored.

The article outlines the background to the changes in financial markets and growth of big technology (BigTech), data technology (DataTech) and stablecoin technology (StableTech). It discusses the nature, structure, and operation of Facebook's Libra digital coin with specific reference to Libra, the Libra Foundation, Novi digital wallet, Libra reserve pool, and early regulatory reaction. The core legal and regulatory issues, along with technical difficulties, are explored.

The article examines the relationship between economic growth and financial sector size. Also cited are the ideal macro-systemic model to financial markets and regulation, the interdependency of socioeconomic development and the internal dynamics of finance, and the interconnection between credit allocation and credit modulation.

The article examines the macroeconomic effects of manipulative practices in the financial markets. Also cited are the steps taken by U.S. lawmakers and regulators to resolve the regulatory weaknesses and gaps exposed by the 2008 financial crisis like the creation of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and the contributions by academics like the proposed use of monetary policy for financial regulation.

The article discusses the effectiveness of a regulatory stimulus in bolstering the macroeconomy during major recessions or liquidity traps. It examines whether the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act is effective in promoting economic growth in the U.S., as well as the impact of deregulation as macroeconomic tool and to economic institutions.

The article discusses the time-varying financial regulations implemented in the U.S. to ensure the solvency of banking institutions. Topics include the proposed macroprudential regulations which consider business cycles and macroeconomic vulnerabilities, the relationship between microprudential and macroprudential rules, and the deregulatory agenda advanced by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The essays in this issue of Dædalus raise fascinating and urgent questions about inequality, time, and interdisciplinary research. They lead me to ask further questions about the public's commitment to reducing inequality, the importance of political power in explaining and reducing social and economic inequities, and the possible incommensurability of activists' and policy-makers' vantage points or job descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law of registration of company charges is of considerable importance for corporate finance transactions throughout the UK. This article analyses the current regime that came into force on 6 April 2013. It examines various aspects of the regime, principally from a Scots law perspective, including what is meant by a "charge", when charges are created, the extent to which unregistered charges are effective, and the rules regarding registration of charges over acquired property. The article demonstrates that, although the new regime is a general improvement on the previous one, there are a number of new and familiar problems concerning its applicability and operation in relation to Scots law. There are also some implications involving the uniformity of Scots law and English law in the area that arise from the fact that the regime is now UK-wide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article urges policy makers to focus on the financial system as a whole when developing legislation aimed at mitigating undue risks associated with mortgage-backed securities. Topics discussed include the history and causes of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010, the different methods of securitization in Europe and the U.S., and the obstacles to financial stability that exist in global markets.

Abstract China's Internet companies and citizens are now world leaders in developing and using the Internet and related information technologies for financial transactions. Accordingly, it is important that China becomes a world leader in identifying challenges posed by Internet finance, and providing law and governance solutions to address these challenges. While the Internet and its associated technologies are now globally available, a core question is whether, and to what extent, regulatory challenges and opportunities are common across different jurisdictions, or whether they reflect local circumstances. In short, an interesting question is what can the world learn from China as it takes the lead in addressing Internet finance challenges, and what can China learn from the world as it seeks to do so? This article first identifies the landscape of China's burgeoning Internet finance market, including key technologies and services and government and nongovernment players. The article then turns to key regulatory challenges, with a focus on factors especially significant in China. The article then examines the "top down" "campaign style" approach to regulation, which is China government's initial response to emerging challenges. Following an analysis of the campaign, some suggestions are then made for future possible governance strategies. We explain how emerging "information" based and experiment-based approaches to governance are drawing on both global and Chinese experiences to harness the capabilities of the Internet and the collective energies of Internet finance enterprises and users to advance the regulation of the China Internet finance system in a way that is conducive to the public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores whether the post-GFC global financial architecture is likely to provide efficient regulation capable of preventing a future crisis from occurring. The article starts with a brief overview of the emergence in the 1970s of global financial architecture. A thorough descriptive analysis of the post-crisis architecture follows, raising serious doubts regarding the current architecture's ability to accomplish its goal. This analysis is performed in two stages, taking first an outsider's perspective on the changes the architecture underwent after the crisis and moving then to the inside -- the structure and contents of the architecture. Using macro-prudential methodological tools, the establishment of the Financial Stability Board is reviewed, along with three cutting edge regulations: the Basel III framework for banking, the IOSCO's recommendation for money market funds, and the FSB's recommendations regarding repurchase agreements. Pointing out the architecture's perceived failure to provide stability due to severe regulatory arbitrage, the article then widens the lens to explore the implications of the above regulation. The article suggests that the current architecture encourages 'financialisation' and pushes the financial system and the real economy further apart. Consequently, the article raises normative concerns regarding the legal foundations of the global financial architecture, and its legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do jurisdictions comply (or not) with international soft law in finance? This research systematically links international and domestic explanations of compliance by highlighting the "disjuncture" between the international standard‐setting process and the process of domestic compliance. Two causal mechanisms that affect compliance are identified. In the uploading stage, elected officials delegate the making of international soft law to domestic regulators; large, internationally active financial institutions mobilize extensively and, to a large extent, successfully. In the downloading stage, domestic interest groups team up with elected officials in order to resist compliance with international soft law that has negative distributional implications for domestic constituencies. These arguments are illustrated through a structured, focused comparison, and process tracing of the mixed record of compliance of the two main jurisdictions worldwide—the United States and the European Union—with the main international banking standards, the Basel Accords. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from the Piovego, the fraud magistracy of early modern Venice, offers a critical perspective on the documentary record of credit and the ways in which this was used in practice. Although it was formally illegal to charge interest on personal loans, a variety of legal fictions were employed to evade the ban. Such fictions significantly reduced the transparency and certainty of exchange, pushing personal loans into a world of semi-legality. This was a ‘baroque economy’, in which people were aware of the potential discrepancy between surface form and underlying substance, and private agreements might be contested on grounds of substantive fairness. The ‘hidden transcripts’ presented by litigants indicate that the formal record must be interpreted through a ‘thick description’ that considers its role as a resource in a broader process of negotiation. Far from being a ‘market’, characterized by price competition, choice, and transparency, the informal economy of credit was embedded in long-term power relationships. Rather than celebrating intermediaries such as brokers and notaries as facilitators of ‘market’ relations, we need to understand them as part of a hierarchical network of power and wealth, embedded in long-term relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]