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The Securities and Exchange Commission plays a central part in the U.S. regulatory framework for the supervision of the _financial industry. How has the SEC carried out this mission? Despite recurrent crises, systematic studies of SEC performance data are surprisingly scarce. As the SEC reforms itself to address the shortcomings revealed in 2007-2008, a systematic examination of the agency's past record can help identify priorities and evaluate the agency's renewed efforts. This study takes a first step in studying empirically SEC enforcement against investment banks and brokerage houses, examining the agency's record in the period right before the 2007-2008 crisis. This data suggests that defendants associated with big.firms fared better in SEC enforcement actions as compared to defendants associated with smaller firms in three important dimensions. First, SEC actions against big.firms were more likely to involve corporate liability exclusively, with no individuals subject to any regulatory action. Second, big-firm defendants were more likely to end up in administrative rather than court proceedings, controlling for types of violation and levels of harm to investors. Third, within administrative proceedings, big-firm employees were likely to receive lower sanctions, notably temporary or permanent bars from the industry. These patterns have important implications for major debates concerning corporate liability, regulatory capture, and the public and private enforcement of securities laws.

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The proliferation of international standards has triggered heated debates in recent years. From human rights to environmental protection, from the Internet to financial derivatives, from antitrust to missile technology, international standards govern some of the most important issues of our day. These standards are not legally binding, but scores of governments around the world have incorporated them wholesale in their national legal orders. The drafters of these standards are not political leaders, formal government representatives, or international organizations, but rather informal committees of ministry officials, regulators, or private experts. Labeled transnational regulatory networks, these informal bodies have puzzled legal scholars and international relations theorists. Why do states adopt these standards instead of producing their own laws? How do these new global standard setters come about, and what are their goals? Addressing these questions has been the source of both “euphoria” and “anxiety,” as a leading commentator has recognized.

Stock exchanges around the world have recently discarded their traditional mutual membership structure in favor of a for-profit corporate format. This development increased fears of conflicts of interest, as forprofit exchanges are more sensitive to pressures from their constituents and more likely to abuse their regulatory powers. In this Article, we explore the allocation of regulatory responsibilities to market infrastructure institutions, administrative agencies, and central government entities in the eight most influential jurisdictions for securities regulation in the world. Examining how different jurisdictions answer this question is particularly pressing given the December 2006 transatlantic stock exchange merger activity. After discussing the role of self-regulatory organizations in the oversight of modern stock exchanges, we report the results of a survey of the allocation of regulatory powers in a sample of eight key jurisdictions. In that survey, we examine the allocation of such powers at three levels: rulemaking, monitoring of compliance with these rules, and enforcement of rules violations. Based on our findings, we categorize these jurisdictions in three distinct models of allocation of regulatory powers: a Government-led Model that preserves significant