Abstract

Costs and Transaction Costs determined by Market Organization as Categories in Stock Exchange Policy

Frequently, no agreement can be reached between jurists and economists on whether and in what manner the protection of investors should be augmented. The author confronts the selfcritical thesis of Hopt on the further development of the protection of investors from the legal standpoint with two economic approaches: first, the general principle of organization theory derived from the theory of property rights, which states that arrangements must always be made in such a way that transactions costs are minimized; and secondly, a stock exchange policy concept developed for the Commission of the European Communities, which calls for minimization of the costs determined by the market organization. The second approach proves suitable to help formulate the first in more concrete terms and clarify its field of application. Above all, however, it can present systematically the effects of investor-protection measures on costs determined by the market organization and thus facilitate the jurists’ debate. The stock exchange policy approach leads to a reticent assessment of specific investor- protection regulations intended to give the investor direct protection against a quite specific risk, and calls for augmentation of indirect investor-protection arrangements which, as is shown in detail, have been firmly established for a long time in the stock exchange organization and in individual security trading firms.