This note explores the costs and benefits of different policy options to reduce the risks associated with credit booms, drawing upon several country experiences and the findings from econometric analysis.

Banking crises are usually followed by a decline in credit and growth. Is this because crises tend to take place during economic downturns, or do banking sector problems have independent negative effects on the economy? To answer this question we examine industrial sectors with differing needs...

We test for the existence of a moral hazard effect attributable to official crisis lending by analyzing the evolution of sovereign bond spreads in emerging markets before and after the Russian crisis. The nonbailout of Russia in August 1998 is interpreted as an event that decreased the perceived...

Financial globalization has increased dramatically over the past three decades, particularly for advanced economies, while emerging market and developing countries experienced more moderate increases. Divergences across countries stem from different capital control regimes, and factors such as...

The ongoing global financial crisis is rooted in a combination of factors common to previous financial crises and some new factors. The crisis has brought to light a number of deficiencies in financial regulation and architecture, particularly in the treatment of systemically important financial...