A number of banks in developed countries argue that the new capital requirements under Basel III are too stringent and that implementing the proposed regulation would require raising large amounts of capital, with adverse consequences on credit and the cost of finance. In contrast, many emerging...

In recent years, and especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a number of emerging-market economies have been reforming their regulatory frameworks to adopt recommendations of the macroprudential approach. This paper discusses the potential usefulness of implementing this...

This paper shows that, in spite of recent progress in the usage of alternative financial services by adult populations, Latin America's financial inclusion gaps relative to either high-income countries or the region's comparators (countries with a similar degree of development) have not reduced...

The international financial crisis of 2008–09 exposed the strengths and weaknesses of the current paradigm of development in Latin America, a paradigm based on liberalized capital accounts and significantly improved macroeconomic conditions. This paper presents lessons derived from the crisis,...

The financial systems in emerging market economies during the 2008-09 global financial crisis performed much better than in previous crisis episodes, albeit with significant differences across regions. For example, real credit growth in Asia and Latin America was less affected than in Central...

This paper analyzes Latin America's Financial Inclusion Gap, the difference between the average financial inclusion for Latin America and the corresponding average for a set of comparator countries. At the country level, we assess four types of obstacles to financial inclusion: macroeconomic...

This paper assesses the resilience of Paraguay's economic and financial stability to external shocks. To this end, the paper expands on previous work by Rojas-Suarez (2015) and constructs a resilience indicator that has two dimensions: the first refers to the capacity of an economy to withstand...

The depth of and access to financial services provided by banks throughout Latin America are extremely low in spite of its recognized importance for economic activity, employment and poverty alleviation. Low financial depth and access hurts the poor the most and is due to a variety of obstacles...

This paper investigates the shifts in Latin American banks' funding patterns in the post-global financial crisis period. To this end, we introduce a new measure of exposure of local banking systems to international debt markets that we term: International Debt Issuances by Locally Supervised...

Despite increasing volatility in the global economy, the uptake of the IMF's two precautionary credit lines, the Flexible Credit Line (FCL) and the Precautionary and Liquidity Line (PLL), has remained limited — currently to just four countries. The two new lending instruments were created in...