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Abstract:
How do governance structures emerge in the new institutional structure of the financial system?
Since the 1980s, a market-based institutional structure has been developing in parallel with the
traditional bank-based structure and has supplanted the traditional system as the dominant source
of credit and liquidity for the US economy. The growth of this new parallel system, however, has
not been accompanied by a corresponding expansion of the formal laws and regulations that
govern economic action. As a result, large sectors of the US economy operate beyond traditional
law and regulation and pose systemic risks to the broader economy and society. This article
identifies and explicates the governance mechanisms that have emerged in one of the four major
markets in the new parallel system—the U.S. hedge fund market—and the failures thereof. The
empirical data for this study come from three years of fieldwork, 40 semi-structured interviews
with expert informants, and eVestment|HFN database. This article advances the multilevel causal
model developed by new institutionalism in economic sociology, with research findings that
suggest that (1) the emergence of a governing social order is the result of interactions between the
formal institutional environment regulating the traditional financial system and the social
relations, informal norms, and institutionalized practices of interest-driven parallel financial
organizations, and (2) governance failures emerge at specific locations where the formal
institutional environment and the informal set of institutional and social structural governance
mechanisms break down.
