This chapter is an overview of the field of international finance from the perspective of law and regulation. It is organized as follows. First, it examines what the field of international finance is, with respect to law, regulation and policy. Second, it discusses the degree of integration of national financial markets, a matter affecting a multiplicity of issues. Third, it looks at the sources of international financial law and regulation—both national and international. Fourth, it evaluates the overall costs and benefits of the increasing globalization of international finance. These four sections are all introductory to the fifth section, the burden of this Chapter, which analyzes, with respect to securities and banking regulation, the decision as to what rules, e.g. of the home or host country, or international, apply in particular cases of regulation. The chapter then further examines this issue in the context of sovereign debt.

The Chapter concludes that, as a positive matter, there has been and will continue to be a progression toward harmonized rules created and supervised by supranational authorities in the
field of international finance because this approach minimizes global financial instability and maximizes efficiency. It also concludes that various schemes to allocate authority between host and home countries will fail to accomplish these ends satisfactorily.