NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The easiest way to get a Wall Streeter worked up these days is to bring up New York's eroding status as the world's financial capital.
One thing that's been on the minds of U.S. investors has been that New York's financial markets have been winning a smaller share of foreign listings while London's share is growing - a sign to some that New York is rapidly losing its global financial dominance.
The share of global IPO volume captured by U.S. exchanges last year was barely a third of that attracted in 2001. European exchanges, meanwhile, saw their share of global IPO volume jump more than 30 percent over the same period, according to a recent report by the consulting firm McKinsey.
Driving the growth in Europe has been the explosion of the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a smaller market designed to attract growth companies.
Part of the reason AIM has been so successful in attracting foreign listings? It has weaker regulations than U.S. markets.
But the U.S. isn't really losing out by not attracting these firms, according to Tom Dubbs, a partner at law firm Labaton Sucharow & Rudoff who specializes in securities litigation.
"From the point of view of investor protection or from a more narrow view of providing fees to Wall Street, the fact that these offerings are going to London should not be viewed as a negative," he said.
Dubbs thinks the AIM's weaker regulations will eventually erode investor confidence and could lead to investor losses from fraudulent activity, posing big problems for the London market down the road.
There are already signs officials in London are starting to show concern about whether the market's reputation is being stained by companies with weak corporate governance standards that list there.
The Financial Services Authority, the U.K.'s financial regulator, said last month it would start holding discussions with shareholders about the quality of U.K. markets and is likely to issue a report later this year.
Policymakers and business leaders have called for easing the regulatory burden on foreign companies, especially when it comes to complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, the law Congress passed in 2002 that toughened accounting and reporting standards for public companies.
They argue that easing these rules will help the U.S. shore up its competitiveness. It's true the U.S. has a more challenging regulatory and litigation climate, but a new study published last month suggests rules like Sarbanes-Oxley haven't really hurt the competitiveness of U.S. markets.
Professors from Ohio State University and the University of Toronto tracked cross-listings on the New York and London stock exchanges from 1990 to 2005 and found that foreign companies that list on a U.S. exchange are valued at a significant premium relative to their counterparts at home that don't cross-list. There was no such premium for foreign companies that listed in London, however.
"Our evidence is consistent with the theory that an exchange listing in New York has unique governance benefits for foreign firms. These benefits have not been seriously eroded by (Sarbanes-Oxley) and cannot be replicated through a London listing," the authors wrote.
Investors appear to reward foreign companies that list in the U.S. for their willingness to meet stringent regulatory requirements, and the implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley haven't really changed that, said Andrew Karolyi, a finance professor at Ohio State University who was one of the authors of the study.
"(Our study) should caution people who are prematurely declaring the impending decline of U.S. capital markets in terms of their competitiveness relative to capital markets around the world," he said in an interview.
Cross-listing in the U.S. may bring a premium for foreign companies, but there's still no question that the share of foreign listings in the U.S. is shrinking, said Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
That's troubling since vibrant capital markets are important driving forces for the economy. Financial services account for about 8 percent of GDP, the broadest measure of the economy, and more than 5 percent of all jobs in the U.S., according to McKinsey.
Zingales, who is also a member of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, an independent group formed to examine the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets, said his research shows that U.S. regulations have a different effect on foreign companies depending on where they come from.
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance tends to help companies from developing countries with poor corporate governance records, but isn't as helpful - or can even damage - foreign companies from well-regulated markets like England and Canada, he said.
"There is no question that one of attractions of the U.S. is its reputation as a fair market. The question is what is the optimal amount of regulation?" he said. 
