Do Regulations Contain Crisis? A Libertarian’s Criminological Exploration of Financial Regulations & Financial Crisis

• In Event: Corporate Crime in the U.S. and Europe

Abstract

Since it surfaced in 2008, many commentators have attributed the current financial crisis to either money dynamics or mortgage fraud. Some scholars in criminology/criminal justice offered a crime-as-choice theory as the main framework for a macro-level analysis of white-collar crimes behind the current economic recession and related policy advocate of sound regulations. This presentation dissents these popular views and reinforces a criminological exploration of financial regulations and financial crisis from a libertarian perspective. Under a libertarian perspective, regulations alone can never be the answers to corporate offense and related financial crisis because regulations alone cannot offer reasonable incentives for balancing entrepreneurship and corporate malice. Instead, under a libertarian perspective, both assessable regulations and transparent competition are still the necessary mechanisms squaring the trade-off between corporate offenses and entrepreneurial firm growth/economic development in the long run. In this regard, strain and control theories may offer some informational resources for understanding how an entrepreneur could or would internalize his/her risks of financial innovations in order to prevent corporate offenses and promote entrepreneurial firm growth/economic development from a libertarian perspective.

Author

• Jiabo Liu, Mississippi Valley State University