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This paper explores how the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has dealt with the emerging issue of accounting for cryptocurrencies by investigating its constituents' expectations and the motivations underlying its regulatory response.

The theoretical lens of regulatory space is used to analyse the four-year debate around cryptocurrency holdings and informs the extensive thematic analysis of public documents, meetings recordings and comment letters on the topic.

Facing national standard setters' initiatives to regulate accounting for cryptocurrency, the IASB defended its position in the regulatory space through an agenda decision based on ewct 2xisting standards, which was finalised by the International Financial Reporting Standards Interpretation Committee (IFRS IC) despite criticism from constituents and Board members.

The paper provides insights into the IASB approach to a regulatory vacuum regarding a new class of items, which derive from a new and rapidly-evolving technology. Disruptive technology impacts the contested arena of accounting regulation, in which the constituents ask for new solutions and the IASB tries to resist such pressures, while defending its position.

The paper sheds light on the growing importance of agenda decisions in the IFRS environment and on the limits of the IASB long regulatory process in the circumstance of emerging accounting issues deriving from rapidly-evolving technology.

This investigation is timely and relevant as it considers the regulatory issues arising from disruptive technological innovations (i.e. cryptocurrency), shedding light on the limits of regulatory processes in times of technological change.

This study seeks to deepen the understanding of the political process underlying the establishment and evolution of corporate governance (CG) regulations in a developing country.

Drawing on regulatory space concept (Hancher and Moran, 1989) and Oliver's (1991) typology of strategic responses, the authors identify which actor participated in and benefitted from the establishment of a new transnational CG regulation in Pakistan. Data were collected through interviews and from the published secondary sources.

The findings highlighted regulations are being influenced and shaped up by the political process of negotiation, bargaining, manipulation and domination between powerful and resourceful actors in a given regulatory space. National regulators and regulatees can be indeed fervent opponents to the transnational regulations when it comes to protecting their well-rooted national interests.

This study contributes to the accounting literature by illustrating political processes through which internationally recognised CG practices are resisted, negotiated and implemented in the developing countries. The regulator must pay attention that the outcome of the regulatory change process is the result of carefully crafted and conscious strategies of actors in the regulatory space.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which growth-oriented small and micro-businesses (SMBs) are affected by regulations. Case studies from North-West England are used to investigate the relationship between attitudes and responses to regulation and the characteristics of business growth.

This research examines the relationship between regulation and growth using eight case studies of SMBs. The selected cases are proactive in seeking new market opportunities and innovative in terms of product development or business process.

Case studies confirm that owner-managers of SMBs experience high levels of regulatory burden. However, some growth-oriented businesses also recognise the advantages in being proactive in seeking regulatory knowledge. These advantages were particularly prevalent in cases where growth is driven by product innovation in relatively new product markets.

The study is based on a limited number of case studies in one region of England. Even so, interviews facilitate probing to increase understanding of the underlying reasons for attitudes towards regulation. The cases demonstrate that even very small businesses can use regulatory knowledge as a basis for business growth.

The findings suggest that networking in order to engage with regulatory regimes can generate competitive advantages and open up new market opportunities for small businesses.

This research contributes towards the debate on the impact of regulations on the economy at the micro level and in doing so highlights important nuances in the relationship between business growth and the regulatory environment.

The aim of this study is to analyse the transformation of the Ecuadorian financial system using the regulatory dialectic approach (Kane, 1977). This research examines the initial conditions and motivating factors of the reform process, as well as the interplay between government and bankers during the period 2007-2012.

Kane’s regulatory dialectic suggests that regulation of financial institutions is a series of cyclical interactions between opposing political and economic forces. Three main stages are identified: thesis (measures and regulatory actions), antithesis (avoidance/lobby against those reforms) and synthesis (adaptive reregulation resulting from the interaction between interest groups).

Since 2007, the government focused on regulating interest rates, developing a liquidity fund for banking emergencies, increasing taxation and restricting international capital flows. These government initiatives took place against a background of conflicting interests. Private bankers opposed the majority regarding them as burdensome new rules, rather than enlightened reforms. Publicly, these reforms as intended by the government were seemingly supported. Finally through the political process, they were approved. To date, these reforms have strengthened the financial system, produced encouraging social policy results and placed the financial sector to serve the government’s development strategy.

Using Kane’s notion of regulatory dialectic, we explain the process of financial reform in Ecuador as part of a cyclical interaction between opposing forces. Drawing on this framework enabled insight into the nature of government intervention. Hence, we show how that intervention affected the growth, development and structure of the banking system.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether regulations can prevent financial crises based on the case of Sweden in the 20th century. The evolution of banking regulation relies heavily on learning across borders as well as responding to recent and remembered crises. Sweden went from being an open economy with a highly protected national banking system with several banking crises under the Classical regime, through the Statist regime with no crises followed by abrupt liberalisation in the 1980s as the country changed to a more market-based regime. This study examines the regulatory responses to crises in each of these periods to assess how, and whether, an often backward-looking regulatory framework can address forward-looking risks.

This study is a qualitative study using a historical method. The authors use archival material, official publications and statistical data as well as secondary literature to succinctly analyse crises and regulatory responses in different regulatory regimes in the 20th century. The theoretical framework builds on three macro- and microeconomic policy regimes, the Classical, the Statist and the Market regime.

The authors find that regulations can play a decisive role in alleviating a banking crisis, but the relationship between regulations and economic development is complex, and regulations alone cannot prevent a crisis.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study of banking regulations in Sweden and how these change in response to crises with the aim of improving the role of banks in financial intermediation and financial stability. This study contributes to a body of literature on financial crises with a long-term perspective and an assessment of regulations as a policy response.

Reflecting on recent empirical developments as well as insights from regulatory state theory, the paper considers directions in which the regulatory state could develop in the post-COVID-19 era.

This is a de-contextualised analysis of regulatory developments drawing on the prior regulatory state literature and literature on post-crisis responses. Taking into account recent empirical developments related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the paper sets out, in a comparative context, scenarios for the future development of the regulatory state.

Predicting the direction in which the regulatory state will develop is challenging, particularly at this early stage. Yet, we provide a conceptual framework for thinking about possible futures of the regulatory state and how domestic and international factors might mediate these futures.

The paper provides a structured approach to the analysis of the regulatory state bringing together insights from the literature on the regulatory state, public management reform, and global regulatory shifts.

This study aims to examine the impact of regulation and other micro- and macro-economic factors on banks’ productivity growth. It investigates the impact of different regulatory reforms on banks’ performance of total factor productivity (TFP) and its component efficiencies, along with their association with bank-specific variables of profitability and equity, and with macro-level variables of economy and freedom. That is, through analysing the influence of regulatory and supervisory policies related to Basel accords pillars of capital and market discipline through private monitoring; restrictions on bank activities; and economic and financial freedoms on TFP growth and year-end performance in banking.

The authors examine TFP for commercial banks in response to regulatory reforms on an international scale. To estimate the TFP, the authors use a non-parametric frontier technique by calculating the Malmquist output-oriented index, following Delis et al. (2011) and Worthington (1999). The components of the Malmquist index are ratios of distance functions making its estimation a straightforward technique using activity analysis or data envelopment analysis methods. This allows controlling for efficiency changes depending on the reallocation of production frontiers signalling the technical change and the technical efficiency at once.

Results show that high capital requirements enhance productivity growth in North and Latin American banks, but not in European African or Asian banks. Supervisory powers drive bank productivity growth in all regions except Europe and Central Asia. Restrictions on real estate, insurance and securities activities impede productivity change in all income level groups but not in high-income economies. The results also show that market volatility and Z-score drive technological change and scale efficiency growth, but negatively impact pure technical efficiency.

This paper contributes to the literature by examining the relationship between the implementation of regulatory standards and the performance of the banking sector following a structural model of the banking firm and the concept of optimisation. An additional contribution of this study is that it examines economies with different levels of income based on the gross national income per capita. The study summarises bank-specific data used to synthesise the banks’ productivity (inputs and outputs) and country-specific economic and regulatory compliance data over 19 years (1999-2017). The extent of this data set coverage makes it most recent and most conclusive of variables to provide a significant contribution to the literature on bank regulation and efficiency effect.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implicit subsidies received, in the form of stock market returns, from the perception that large banking organizations are too big to fail, and implications for financial regulation.

The empirical analysis focuses on the responses of stock prices of various size groups of banking organizations to announcement of government capital injections to banks (troubled assets relief program) during the 2008 financial crisis, and summarizes responses of regulatory authorities to the crisis.

The paper finds positive and statistically significant stock return reactions both for a portfolio of the large banking organizations that are part of the initial capital injection plan and a portfolio of the large banking organizations that are not part of the initial capital injection plan, implying a too‐big‐to‐fail (TBTF) effect, especially for the latter group of institutions.

The paper focuses on a short time frame of stock price reactions to specific events, for the largest US banks. Further examination of longer‐term stock price effects on US as well as foreign banks may be of interest.

The results have implications for the manner and scope of financial regulatory actions and changes in regulators' approaches to systemic risk and individual bank regulation.

The paper examines TBTF bank subsidy effects in response to a rapidly unfolding financial crisis. These have implications for longer term responses, particularly in the regulatory sphere.

The purpose of this paper is to explore employers' perceptions of China's Labour Contract Law (LCL) and its influence on employment relations and human resource management practices in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This paper adopts a qualitative approach based on 24 interviews with owners and human resource managers of 23 privately owned SMEs in eastern and western China.

Mixed levels of reported compliance with the provisions of the LCL legislation indicate that the regulatory adoptive behaviours of SME employers are partially explained by the coercive mechanism. Various strategies adopted by employers suggest that when under the pressure of law, SMEs are formalising their employment practices while simultaneously seeking to maintain a degree of informality in respect these practices.

The adopted qualitative approach may limit the findings to be explorative within broader national contexts.

The move towards more formalised practices helps to address issues such as high turnover and widespread labour shortage in SMEs. The paper is likely to be of interest to policymakers seeking to gain insights into employers' perceptions as a means to develop more effective labour regulations.

Unlike most of existing literature examining the general compliance to the LCL and workers' perspectives, this paper reports the views of SME employers; as such, it offers an original contribution to understanding of the role and behaviours of SME employers in regulatory responses in the studied context.

This paper reviews key aspects of the regulatory response in the UK and the USA to the apparent crisis of confidence in auditing stimulated by Enron and other recent corporate scandals. Drawing on a consideration of the nature of the market for auditing services and the regulatory and corporate governance structures in which auditing is embedded, the paper argues that the bulk of recent regulatory attention appears to have been on matters of auditor independence rather than auditor competence. Such a focus is seen to have parallels with former ‘crisis’ eras in the auditing arena, while the analysis presented also raises questions about the status of the auditing function within accounting firms and the capacity of regulatory reform to deliver a fundamentally enhanced auditing function. The paper concludes by stressing the importance of making more transparent what is being done in the name of auditing and audit regulation.