What Exactly is Market Integrity? An Analysis of One of the Core Objectives of Securities Regulation

One of the main objectives of securities regulation around the world is to protect the integrity or fairness of the markets. This, together with protecting investors, improving the efficiency of markets, and protecting the markets from systemic risk, form the four fundamental goals of securities regulation. However, what exactly is envisaged by this concept of market integrity or fairness? Are these simply norms of behaviour incapable of further definition? Despite their importance, relatively little attention has been given to these concepts in the literature. Do they, for example, require securities regulators to just work towards eliminating dishonest trading practices such as market manipulation and insider trading? Or should regulators be required to go further and ensure, for example, transparency of corporate information, transparency of price information, and equality of access to the markets? Examining what is encompassed by the objectives of protecting market integrity and fairness is critical for a number of reasons. First, if they are only normative concepts, they may be incapable of measurement. This is problematic because it may be impossible to assess the progress of securities regulators towards achieving these goals. In addition, if they are in fact incapable of further definition and measurement, then innovations which improve market efficiency, another key goal of securities regulation, are likely to be permitted even if the innovation in question actually detracts from the fairness or integrity of the market. This is because improvements in market efficiency are generally quantifiable, and, therefore, measured improvements in market efficiency create the momentum for those improvements to be permitted. This Article seeks to analyse the concepts of market integrity and market fairness. It examines how they became one of the core goals of securities regulation around the world. The Article then attempts to break down these concepts and provide further definition of them. It is hoped that this analysis will encourage the development of metrics that assess securities regulators’ performance, as well as enable the assessment of whether or not new market innovations should be adopted

Designing a surveillance program for early detection of alien plants and insects in Norway

Naturalized species of alien plants and animals comprise < 3% of biodiversity recorded in Norway but have had major impacts on natural ecosystems through displacement of native species. Encroachment of alien species has been especially problematic for coastal sites close to transport facilities and urban areas with high density housing. The goal of our field project was to design and test a surveillance program for early detection of alien species of vascular plants and terrestrial insects at the first phase of establishment in natural areas. In our 3-year project (2018–2020), we sampled 60 study plots in three counties in the Oslofjord region of southern Norway. Study plots (6.25 ha) were selected by two criteria: manual selection based on expert opinion (27 plots) or by random selection based on weights from a hotspot analysis of occurrence of alien species (33 plots). Vascular plants were surveyed by two experienced botanists who found a total of 239 alien species of vascular plants in 95 rounds of surveys. Insects and other invertebrates were captured with a single Malaise trap per site, with 3–4 rounds of repeated sampling. We used DNA-metabarcoding to identify invertebrates based on DNA extractions from crushed insects or from the preservative media. Over 3500 invertebrate taxa were detected in 255 rounds of sampling. We recorded 20 alien species of known risk, and 115 species that were new to Norway, including several ‘doorknocker’ species identified by previous risk assessments. We modeled the probabilities of occupancy (ψ) and detection (p) with occupancy models with repeated visits by multiple observers (vascular plants) or multiple rounds of sampling (insects). The two probabilities covaried with risk category for alien organisms and both were low for species categorized as no known or low risk (range = 0.052–0.326) but were higher for species categorized as severe risk (range = 0.318–0.651)... Arthropods · DNA-metabarcoding · Early detection · Invasive · Invertebrates · Occupancy models · Rapid response · Study design · Vascular plantsDesigning a surveillance program for early detection of alien plants and insects in NorwaypublishedVersio