Any new available information is accurately processed and impounded in asset prices, leading to more accurate pricing of assets and risks. And the permanent quest for arbitrage opportunities has fostered crossmarket and cross-border strategies also leading to more consistent pricing. Allocative efficiency, that is the market’s ability to allocate resources in a way that maximises the welfare attained through their use, has also improved: for a given investor, there is a wider and more diversified range of investment opportunities than ever before. Operational efficiency has so far gained from globalisation, since the cost of financial operations has quickly fallen, due to productivity gains in the financial sector stemming from the scale and scope of economies and the intense competition between markets and intermediaries. Nevertheless, this overall trend towards efficiency occasionally bumps into puzzles that are not readily explained by economic theory. For instance, the longstanding question as to why capital does not flow, in net terms, from rich to poor countries has not yet been clarified since it was first addressed by Robert Lucas. It has recently been supplemented by the so-called “allocation puzzle”, highlighting the fact that capital seems to flow toward economies with relatively low investment rates. Convincing explanations for these puzzles certainly require taking into account market imperfections (such as credit constraints), differences in financial infrastructures as well as growth externalities (such as human capital). Another salient feature of financial globalisation is the rapid maturing of emerging economies and markets.

2 – What role for regulatory and oversight authorities? In this context, it is first and foremost the responsibility of the private sector to design stablecoin schemes that do not bring undue risks to our payment systems. For that purpose, regulatory and oversight authorities have an important role to play in order to ensure that the risk management requirements to be met are clear, comprehensive and complied with, while preserving the potential for technological innovation offered by crypto-assets. To that end, they should in my view focus on three main tasks:  - Firstly, working on a regulatory response that preserves the positive potential impact stablecoins might have on the efficiency of our payment systems. Given the rapid pace of innovation, which is also characteristic of stablecoin initiatives, this pleads for developing an agile, pragmatic and proportionate regulatory response rather than setting up an ad-hoc, unique and comprehensive framework. This would be simpler, faster to implement and to adjust, and be more likely to achieve level-playing field conditions. In the European context, this is an encouragement for building on and adapting the functional coverage of existing regulatory frameworks and, in some cases extending their geographical coverage. What comes to mind in particular is the framework for crypto-assets service providers created in France with the 2/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  Pacte bill, and the European framework for e-money issuers, investment funds and financial market infrastructures.