Many academics teaching financial services regulation around the world are feeling very happy these days... one of their breed has made it to the Nobels. The award of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Economics to Frenchman Jean Marc Tirole must come to be seen as recognition of the importance of the discipline.

The Nobel award motivation makes mention of his analysis of market power and regulation, areas which can stand independent study but which in our times are being inescapably drawn together as more and more big financial organisations try to defend themselves from the effects of their own malfeasances.

Tirole has long been attentively watching the current unfolding scenario in the way both regulatory and regulated institutions are operating. Among his over 100 academic articles and 10 books so far, pride of place in the regulatory context must probably be given to his two books published by MIT Press in 1993 and 1994: Procurement and Regulation and Prudential Regulation of Banks.

In both he condemns and emphasises a series of stances, for example, regulators who become too chummy-chummy with those who they regulate, the need for more forex regulation, eagle-eyed supervision of derivative operations, not circumscribing the interpretation of ‘fit and proper’ rules to just powerful oligarchs and so on.

The spread of Tirole’s concerns is indeed great.

Tirole is a man of many talents. From engineering issues to industrial organisation, from public services to SMEs, these and other areas have all fallen under his attentive;analysis and every time he comes out with a view that is social in inspiration but not extenuatingly anti-market, possibly too disciplined for some but generally feasible in what he recommends.

As we try to create students who see regulation in this type of paradigm we are happy that one of us has made it to up there.