This paper uses a Merton-type estimate of the probability of default (PoD) for the main banks in a sample of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and middle-income countries as a proxy for the fragility of their banking systems. Based on theory and stylized facts, the paper...

Using a new database covering some 91 supervisory agencies, this paper examines how important various skilled experts are in the regulatory process and the relative usage of different kinds of such experts. We seek to explore what kind of perspective supervisors in different institutional...

Pan-European banks are starting to emerge, while arrangements for financial supervision and stability are still nationally rooted. This raises the issue who should bear the burden of any proposed recapitalisation should failures occur in a large cross-border bank. A recapitalisation is efficient...

This paper sets out a tractable model which illuminates problems relating to individual bank behaviour, to possible contagious inter-relationships between banks, and to the appropriate design of prudential requirements and incentives to limit 'excessive' risk-taking. Our model is rich enough to...

There are, at least, seven aspects relating to financial regulation where the recent, and still current, financial turmoil has thrown up issues for discussion. These include: 1. The scale and scope of deposit insurance; 2. Bank insolvency regimes, also known as 'prompt corrective action'; 3. Money...

This paper assesses the links between money, credit, house prices, and economic activity in industrialized countries over the last three decades. The analysis is based on a fixed-effects panel vector autoregression, estimated using quarterly data for 17 industrialized countries spanning the...

We compute bid-ask spreads for the dollar/euro exchange rate and find them to be substantially larger than their deutschemark counterparts before introduction of the euro. We show that larger percentage spreads are not explained by volatility, trade intensity, and other standard explanatory...

This paper focuses on the recapitalisation of failing banks. A recapitalisation is efficient if the social benefits (preserving systemic stability) exceed the cost of recapitalisation. In a national setting, the implementation of an optimal policy is relatively straightforward. But in a...

With goods prices being sticky, monetary impulses are initially transmitted to the real economy via changes in asset prices; and asset price fluctuations can independently affect monetary and real developments. Most empirical models try to incorporate such monetary-asset price interactions by...

The absence of a formal international regulatory mechanism to facilitate sovereign debt restructuring has long been recognized as a most serious gap in the architecture of global finance. Why has it proven so difficult to create such a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism (SDRM) at the...