This is the first major treatment of the effects of increased transparency on financial markets: an important and highly controversial issue for both traders and regulators. Focussing on three main themes - market transparency, the consolidation-fragmentation of trading systems, and the scope of regulation (i.e. which markets, and which traders within those markets, should be subject to regulation), the book highlights the importance of these issues to all markets throughout the world. The book draws on research from eight UK based investment exchanges, Deutsche Borse in Frankfurt and documentary evidence from the US markets and their regulators enabling the identification and documentation of the current situation and consideration of what fresh regulatory approaches are required for this new and fast evolving situation.

This volume addresses various aspects of the microstructure of world trading markets and provides scientific evidence on the functioning of specific foreign markets. The study of market microstructure has previously focused on the U.S. markets, but with the rapid expansion in foreign markets there is a real need to understand the nature and functioning of foreign trading markets.

The rise of the regulatory state has been a major feature of modern constitutional democracies. India, the world's largest democracy, is no exception to this trend. This book is the first major study of regulation in India. It considers how the development of regulation in India has altered the nature and functions of the state; how it is reshaping the relationship between business and the state; how it has called for the refashioning of established legal principles; and how it has raised new questions about the relationship between technical expertise and the rule of law. The chapters cover topics ranging from the foundations of the Indian regulatory state to the form of regulation across different sectors to regulation in practice. Together, the chapters reveal the challenges, promise, and limitations offered by contemporary regulatory practices, and they capture the close if sometimes fraught relationship that regulation must inevitably share with the political economy and constitutional schema within which it operates.