Transparency of Banking Supervisors

Following Eijffinger and Geraats (2006), this paper constructs an index of transparency of banking supervisors that takes political, economic, procedural, policy, and operational transparency into account. Based on a survey, the index is constructed for 24 banking supervisors. The average score is 8.4 points (out of 15), whereas the minimum is 5.5 and the maximum 12 points. On average, political transparency is the highest in the sample, while procedural transparency is the lowest. The analysis suggests that it is very hard to identify factors that can explain the large differences in supervisory transparency, suggesting that country-specific developments drive transparency.