Sources of Institutional Change: The Supranational Origins of Europe's New Stock Markets

Abstract

The article explains a curious turn in European political economies. Between 1995 and 2005 national financial elites in twelve Western European countries created almost twenty competing new stock markets designed to improve financing alternatives for entrepreneurial companies. For a region supposedly averse to risk and U.S.-style capitalism, it is surprising that most of the new markets were modeled on the U.S.-based Nasdaq Stock Market, an iconic American institution. The author's structured comparisons of the new markets to one another, to previous ones, and to proposals that never saw the light of day reveal that the primary causes behind the creation, form, and timing of Europe's new markets lie in the political skills, motivations, and actions of supranational European Union bureaucrats. Challenging leading social science explanations for the cross-border convergence of domestic institutions, these findings show that the accumulated effects of day-to-day action by these supranational bureaucrats are potential causes of institutional innovation. The argument adds to a growing body of detailed empirical research on the domestic and global impact of the European regional polity and contributes to scholarly debates about market formation.

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