There is now a widespread recognition in the policy community of the need to strengthen the macroprudential orientation of financial regulatory and supervisory frameworks. At the same time, the usage of the term “macroprudential” remains ambiguous. This essay summarises the specific...

With the insight of 130 years of history, this paper tries to answer three questions: how did changing international monetary and financial conditions shape the targets and tools of central bank cooperation? What factors influenced its intensity? Did a structured organisation, such as the BIS,...

Advances in risk measurement technology have reshaped financial markets and the functioning of the financial system. More recently, they have been reshaping the prudential framework. Looking forward, they have the potential to reshape financial reporting too. Recent initiatives to improve...

There has been mounting evidence that the inflation process has been changing. Inflation is now much lower and much more stable around the globe. And its sensitivity to measures of economic slack and increases in input costs appears to have declined. Probably the most widely supported...

The paper outlines the evolution of the financial industry across industrialised countries since liberalisation gathered momentum in the 1980s and assesses its implications for prudential regulation and supervision, paying particular attention to changes in the degree of compartmentalisation...

This paper was presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Symposium on "Monetary Policy and Uncertainty: Adapting to a Changing Economy" at Jackson Hole, Wyoming on 28-30 August 2003. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the BIS.

We argue that in order to achieve price stability in a sustainable way, central banks should consider paying greater attention to credit in their monetary policy strategies than is generally the case at present. Specifically, simply setting monetary policy so that a two-year inflation forecast...

This paper compares the responses of short-term bank lending rates to policy rates in a sample of 12 industrialised countries and seeks to relate them to characteristics of the financial system and of the policy environment. The degree of competition in the loan market and the clarity of the...

Over the last decade or so, addressing financial instability has risen to the top of the policy agenda. This essay argues that in order to improve the safeguards against financial instability, it may be desirable to strengthen further the macroprudential orientation of current prudential...

The rhetoric of deflation has become more prevalent in policy circles and in the press despite the fact that deflation has been a rare phenomenon in modern fiat currency economies. To better understand the nature of deflation, this paper looks back to a period when deflation was a regular...