MARKET, STATE AND ECONOMY – BUILDING COOPERATION AND TRUST IN A FAIR MANNER
Trust and confidence
Building trust requires transparency. Transparency strengthens trust and enables market participants to make well-informed decisions. For example, governments and supervisory authorities could promote transparency by repealing specific disclosure laws and regulations.
Regulation
Ensuring that fair practices and ethical standards are applied requires appropriate, not excessive or even unnecessary, regulation by authorities.
Competition
Competition means appropriate government structures and support to prevent monopolies and oligopolistic structures and promote small businesses. A competitive market leads to price stability, innovation, and quality improvement.
Education – corporate governance – incentives and dependency – control – cooperation – responsibility
Education and information strengthen market participants' confidence and decision-making security. Governments and companies should aim to invest in education programmes to promote financial education and awareness of consumer rights and responsibilities.
In addition, corporate governance companies should adhere to high standards to ensure and guarantee ethical and responsible behaviour. Good corporate governance includes transparent and accountable management, independent supervision and an appropriate risk management strategy.
In this way, the state and companies can create new markets by incentivising innovation and promoting entrepreneurship, for example, by redimensioning certain tax breaks and subsidies.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) should endeavour to reduce their dependence on large financial institutions and look for alternative sources of financing—for example, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending or cooperative banks.
Governments and supervisory authorities should ensure that market participants comply with rules and regulations by carrying out appropriate controls, such as inspections, audits, and monitoring of financial transactions.
Cooperation between governments and businesses should be encouraged to promote fair practices and ethical standards. Forums for dialogue and partnerships between governments and companies should be created.
Responsible behaviour is the top priority for ensuring market participants' activities do not harm others. To this end, reducing the burden on codes of ethics and establishing complaints centres for consumers could be promoted.
