Consumer Law and Policy Seminars
Safeguarding Public and Private Law Values in Experimentalist Market Regulation
11 May 2026 (Monday), 6:00 – 7:00 PM
Room 824, 8/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Please register at https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=106095
Experimentalist governance is proposed as an appropriate architecture for market regulation under conditions of radical uncertainty about selecting appropriate regulatory solutions together with the difficulties faced by regulators in effectively implementing any solutions through hierarchical means. It relies on local elaboration of solutions by different actors, such as regulators and target entities, subject to the disciplines of peer review of the design and effects of those solutions. Common criticisms of the experimentalist approach include that it is insufficiently constrained by rules and that, as a result, it allows too much discretion in solution-design, which in turn leaves regulators vulnerable to capture by target entities. Experimentalist governance is also said to lack firm normative commitments and, as a result, may instrumentalise private parties, including consumers or users, to public learning and problem-solving. In this talk I will outline key elements of experimentalist market regulation as it has emerged in different settings. Finally, I will highlight public and private law mechanisms which may attenuate the above concerns through the interaction of judicial and peer accountability frameworks.
Speaker
Professor Yane Svetiev holds the Chair in Market Regulation and Private Law at the University of Sydney Law School. He has previously held faculty appointments at Bocconi University (Milan, Italy), the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and at Brooklyn Law School (New York, USA), as well as visiting appointments at the Hertie School of Governance, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, FGV Direito SP, Humboldt University and the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law among others. In addition to his academic appointments, he has served as litigation associate at Cravath, Swaine and Moore LLP (New York, USA) and as judicial associate at the High Court of Australia.
He is the author of the Experimentalist Competition Law and the Regulation of Markets (Hart/Bloomsbury) and the Eighth Edition of Corones’ Competition Law in Australia (Thomson Reuters). He is also chief investigator for an Australian Research Council funded project on transnational peer reviews in market regulation.
More information about the Asian Institute of International Financial Law (AIIFL), please visit https://aiifl.law.hku.hk/.