Over the past decades, financial markets have re-emerged as prime determinants of economic behaviour and performance.
Factors driving this transformation include:
- the liberalisation of domestic and international money and capital markets,
- the explosive growth in international trading of financial assets, and
- the extensive globalisation of the production of goods and services.
Not only are the financial resources of governments dwarfed by the scale of capital flows, but also the scope of national jurisdiction is increasingly irrelevant to markets that operate on a global scale. Deregulation of markets has been accompanied by important developments in the theory of finance and in the technological infrastructure of market trading. These developments have driven the design of new financial products and have also resulted in sophisticated new techniques for the theoretical and quantitative analysis of market behaviour and of risk.
Understanding the impact of these developments on the provision of liquidity is fundamental to understanding the operation of modern economies. To this end, CERF promotes theoretical, quantitative and historical studies, crossing conventional disciplinary boundaries, and the bringing together of research groups of economists, mathematicians, lawyers, historians, computer scientists and market practitioners.
Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the impact of financial market activity on the formulation of public policy.