Adam Smith famously argued that the pursuit of private interests by individuals in markets would produce a common good – that private vices could produce public virtues. This can be set against an alternative tradition in which the market has been a corrupting influence, and which has seen the role of government as that of repressing or controlling those private vices or passions. In his paper, Professor Lindsay Farmer (School of Law, University of Glasgow) explores the relationship between private and public by looking at some developments in the criminalisation of market misconduct (trafficking, insider dealing and market manipulation). He analyses offences in these areas to show how the role of the criminal law is changing, as it is increasingly called upon to protect market ‘integrity’. In doing this, he examines how these developments in the area of criminal law reflect a new understanding of the relationship between market and criminal law – and thus between private vice and public virtue.