This Working Paper presents a novel dataset documenting the demographics of the world’s 500 largest companies by market capitalization, as of 30 September 2007. Assigning a birth date to a large company is not a straightforward exercise and involves a measure of judgment, which possibly...

European Union (EU) countries offer a unique experience of financial regulatory and supervisory integration, complementing various other European integration efforts following the Second World War. Financial regulatory and supervisory integration was a very slow process before 2008, despite...

This paper presents a holistic description and assessment of the European Union's financial services policy since the start of financial crisis in mid-2007. The decade-long sequence is divided into four themes, in broadly chronological order: the initial reaction to the 2007-08 financial shock;...

The European Union's banking union project started in mid-2012 in response to the euro-area crisis, with the goal of breaking the bank-sovereign vicious circle. The objective was also to restore private liability in banking and to move towards an integrated supranational market for banking...

China's reshuffle of its financial supervisory architecture announced in March, like previous changes, appears incremental rather than radical. It will not, however, resolve the main challenge hobbling China's financial system, which is not linked to specific choices of supervisory architecture...

Precautionary recapitalisation, a tool for public intervention in the banking sector defined in the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD), is consistent with the rest of BRRD and a legitimate instrument for bank crisis management. The conditions set for it by BRRD are restrictive and...

Precautionary recapitalisation, a tool for public intervention in the banking sector defined in the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD), is consistent with the rest of BRRD and a legitimate instrument for bank crisis management. The conditions set for it by BRRD are restrictive and...

The banking union project has achieved European-level policy integration of microprudential supervision but not of crisis intervention. This largely explains the disappointing progress in the cross-border integration of the banking sector, which we document using data on banks' assets and also...

The banking union project has achieved European-level policy integration of microprudential supervision but not of crisis intervention. This largely explains the disappointing progress in the cross-border integration of the banking sector, which we document using data on banks' assets and also...