This paper develops a model to assess how monetary policy rates affect bank risk-taking. In the model, a reduction in the risk-free rate increases lending profitability by reducing funding costs and increasing the surplus the monopolistic bank extracts from borrowers. Under limited liability,...

The September 2011 Global Financial Stability Report cautions that the risks to global financial stability have increased substantially in recent months, during which heavy public debt burdens and weak growth prospects in many advanced economies combined with a series of shocks to the global...

This paper describes a financial system that should be adopted for the 21st century. The paper highlights that the financial crisis of 2008 has raised fundamental questions about how the financial industry is structured, managed, and regulated. The paper discusses that a well-functioning...

This Selected Issues paper highlights that progress on structural reforms in Nepal stalled during 1994/95 while economic performance deteriorated. Real GDP slowed as agriculture output was depressed by a less favorable monsoon, and exports declined as both the carpet and garment sectors...

This paper examines the recent banking crises in Finland, Norway and Sweden in an attempt to draw some policy conclusions from their experiences. In all three countries, the timing of deregulation coincided with a strongly expansionary macroeconomic momentum. Delayed policy responses, as well as...

This paper estimates a disequilibrium model of credit supply and demand to evaluate whether there was a credit crunch in Finland following the banking crisis of 1991-92. Empirical analysis suggests that the marked reduction in bank lending was mainly in reaction to a cyclical decline in credit...

This paper builds a model of financial sector vulnerability and integrates it into a macroeconomic framework, typically used for monetary policy analysis. The main question to be answered with the integrated model is whether or not the central bank should include explicitly the financial...

The financial crisis has prompted a reconsideration of the taxation of financial institutions, with practice outstripping principle: France, Germany, the United Kingdom and several other European countries have now introduced some form of bank tax, and the U.S. administration has revived its own...

We show that the lightly regulated non-bank mortgage originators contributed disproportionately to the recent boom-bust housing cycle. Using comprehensive data on mortgage originations, which we aggregate at the county level, we first establish that the market share of these independent non-bank...

Financial sector reform in the Baltic countries is reviewed in light of the banking crises that emerged during the reform period. It is argued that the crises had their roots in the structural deficiencies specific to planned economies and the financial environment that developed before and...