D47 - Market DesignReturn

The paper deals with negative impacts of chosen regulatory attributes (regulatory arbitrage, relative over and under regulation) on economic agents' behaviour in the financial distribution area. Using three case studies from the Czech market (life insurance, corporate bonds and pension savings), we demonstrate situations, when state regulatory incursions caused substantial deformations of the target market and the subsequent detriment of final customers. Although partial market failures cannot be ruled out, our observations show that in particular, the regulatory arbitrage between individual sub-sectors of the financial market is a potent stimulator of distribution momentum, which, in turn, can lead to future systemic risks.