White shoes in gray areas : a conceptual history of regulatory arbitrage

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dc.contributor.authorMURRAY, Ian Joseph
dc.date.accessioned2025-06-05T15:14:09Z
dc.date.embargo2029-06-03
dc.date.issued2025
dc.descriptionDefence date: 03 June 2025
dc.descriptionExamining Board: Prof. Peter Frank Drahos (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Martijn Hesselink (European University Institute); Prof. Desmond Manderson (Australian National University); Prof. Imelda Maher (University College Dublin Sutherland School of Law)
dc.description.abstractThe term regulatory arbitrage gained currency in the financial regulatory literature of the 1980s to describe clever strategies firms used to avoid or mitigate regulatory burdens. It captured broader attention after the financial crisis, when banks came under scrutiny for structuring their assets and affairs deliberately to avoid regulations. Since then, commentators have seized on it to describe a broad array of practices across diverse economic sectors. Despite the term’s prevalence, there is scant agreement on the scope of activities it describes. For some, it is merely a catch-all for legal avoidance from time immemorial. Answering calls for work placing this concept in a richer context, this project retraces regulatory arbitrage’s expansion not only as a real-world phenomenon, but equally as a unit of discourse. Regulatory arbitrage is a conceptual metaphor, based on the audacious assumption that every legal principle has its price. It is also a grammatical metaphor: a noun used to describe a process (in lieu of a verb). As such, it naturalizes the behavior it describes as eternal and inevitable, fostering a dangerous conventional wisdom that all regulation is futile. It also obscures the identities of its beneficiaries, curtailing conversations about how uneven access to sophisticated legal advice exacerbates wealth inequality. Through this lens, the concept appears inextricably linked with the ascendancy of financialized business models across the contemporary economy, especially legal practice. It reflects the paramount importance contemporary capitalism, fueled by advances in technology epitomized by artificial intelligence, places on quantitative measures of value. It encourages an instrumental perspective on law, reinforced by law and economics thinking and declining faith in the law’s capacity to vindicate countervailing non-economic values. In so doing, it casts what might otherwise be seen as brazen attempts to undermine the rule of law as innocent efforts to enhance the law’s efficiency.
dc.description.versionChapter 3 'The calculus of compliance: the costs of cost-benefit analysis' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Law, commodification, and the distribution of resources'(2024) in the journal 'Global jurist'. Chapter 4 'Attorney work product: the commodification of compliance' draws upon an earlier versions published as an articles 'Commodification and EU law : a genealogy' (2023) and 'Facing the fiction : can the European Union regulate fictitious commodities and capital?' (2023) in the journal 'European law open'.
dc.embargo.terms2029-06-03
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.citationFlorence : European University Institute, 2025
dc.identifier.doi10.2870/4396605
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/92802
dc.language.isoen
dc.orcid.putcode1814/80013:185495608
dc.publisherEuropean University Institute
dc.relation.ispartofseriesEUI
dc.relation.ispartofseriesLAW
dc.relation.ispartofseriesPhD Thesis
dc.relation.replaceshttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/77973
dc.relation.replaceshttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/76233
dc.relation.replaceshttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/76234
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess
dc.titleWhite shoes in gray areas : a conceptual history of regulatory arbitrage
dc.typeThesis
dspace.entity.typePublication
person.identifier.orcid0000-0003-3480-1183
person.identifier.other44379
relation.isAuthorOfPublication797793a2-eb18-4603-84db-402b06c24629
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery797793a2-eb18-4603-84db-402b06c24629
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