2018 Theses Doctoral

From Financial Liberalization to Financial Integration: A Legal Theory of Finance Reinterpretation of the Asian Financial Crisis and the Implications for the Future of Thailand and South East Asia

Popattanachai, Narun

This dissertation explores the role of law in the financial development of an emerging economic country. Its main proposition is that law plays a fundamental part in both the construction and the subsequent failure of a financial system, in addition to the function of reducing frictions and distortions in order to maintain the orderly running of the market. The dissertation illustrates the aforementioned proposition with an in-depth case study of the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) which was initially rooted in the Thai financial sector. Aided by the analytical paradigm offered by Legal Theory of Finance, it parses the legal and institutional aspects of the rapidly developing financial markets in Thailand and her investing partners. This allows the ensuing Crisis to be seen from the previously underexplored institutional underpinning of the volatile financial cycle which characterized the region at the time. Subsequently, the dissertation employs the same intellectual framework in order to explain the post-crisis reform initiatives and their systemic implications for the regional financial architecture under the auspices of the Association of the South East Asian Nations. This dissertation cuts across a number of disciplines: law and finance, law and economic development, financial and banking regulation, international financial law, to name but a few.