In the euro area, macroprudential policy can be a powerful complement to monetary policy. However, its coordination with microprudential policy is a particularly delicate task. The coexistence of two supervisory regimes that rely on similar tools to pursue different objectives may at times give...

We analyse the wide array of rescue programmes adopted in several countries, following Lehman Brothers' default in September 2008, in order to support banks and other financial institutions. We first provide an overview of the programmes, comparing their characteristics, magnitudes and...

Since 1996 the Basel risk-weighting regime has been based on the distinction between the trading and the banking book. For a long time credit items have been weighted less strictly if held in the trading book, on the assumption that they are easy to hedge or sell. The Great Financial Crisis made...

In December 2010 the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published a set of new regulations for banks in response to the financial crisis. This paper aims at evaluating the possible effects of the new framework on banks' available regulatory capital and risk-weighted assets and assessing...

We investigate the valuation risk affecting financial instruments classified as L2 and L3 for accounting purposes. These are instruments that are not directly traded in active markets and are often relatively complex, opaque and illiquid. There is a huge volume of L2 and L3 instruments in the...

In the post-crisis era banks' capital adequacy is established by the Basel III capital standards and, in many jurisdictions, also by supervisory stress tests. In this paper we first describe the ways in which supervisory stress tests can supplement the risk-based capital framework of Basel III...

This paper examines the evolution of the Pillar 2 framework for banks, introduced by the Basel 2 Accord, and discusses the main issues at stake in the current policy debate. The main objective of Pillar 2 was to complement the minimum requirements established by regulators (Pillar 1) with...

In the aftermath of the euro-area sovereign debt crisis, several commentators have questioned the favourable treatment of banks' sovereign exposures allowed by the current prudential rules. In this paper, we assess the overall desirability of reforming these rules. We conclude that the...

Shadow banking is the creation or transfer – by banks and non-bank intermediaries – of bank-like risks outside the banking system. In Italy the shadow banking system is fully regulated, mostly following the principle of same business-same rules or ‘bank-equivalent regulation'. After an...

This paper analyzes the challenges posed by the implementation of the countercyclical capital buffer framework in Italy and proposes ways of meeting them. In the first part of the analysis we review the limitations of the standardized Basel III credit-to-GDP gap; we then propose possible...