About Regulating Online Investing

''Regulating Online Investing' is an inter-disciplinary research project based at the University of NSW in Sydney, Australia. It focuses on online investment from a legal or regulatory point of view. The legal perspective considers whether current financial regulation provides a sufficient response to the particular characteristics of online investment. It also contains a strand of inquiry that focuses on techniques and values for regulation of online transactions more generally.

The legal or regulatory inquiry is stimulated in part by the findings of behavioural finance research. This indicates that at least some investors do worse online than in traditional investment modes, because of incentives to trade too frequently. There are also some well established cognitive biases, that seem to be exaggerated in the online investing context.

The project adopts the research methods and perspectives of the area of generic information-seeking. Information-seeking perspectives are important because information-seeking behaviour (including information use) in non-advisory environments is central to decisions about the adequacy of current regulation of online investment.

This section will help you locate material which can introduce you to the study of these emerging fields.

References

Basic links and references

We are preparing a short list of references as a quick introduction to this area, covering

• Australian links and references
• International links and references:
  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • Canada

Selected references

The link below is to the Table of Contents of four pages of extensive references of interest to researchers, lawyers, regulators and academics as well as the general reader. Each page also has an internal table of contents.

Selected references (ToC)

These cover the following areas:

I. Online investing

II. Online investing regulation

III. Behavioural finance

IV. Information seeking

Back to top^