Financial exclusion concerns 2.5 billion individuals and more than 450 million enterprises. The G20 countries are committed to the reduction of this phenomenon. The Bank of Italy has a fundamental role in the field of financial inclusion, both on a national and an international scale through...

The paper analyses Islamic finance from the central bank and supervisory authority�s perspective, focusing on the European and Italian context. It depicts a rapidly expanding sector, with recent annual growth rates of between 10 and 15 percent and a geographical presence that now reaches...

The post-crisis financial reform agenda is broad and complex, ranging from strengthening prudential regulation; to enhancing supervision; from mitigating pro-cyclicality to integrating micro- and macro-prudential oversight; from reducing the systemic risk associated with large and complex...

The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at IMF conditionality in the banking sector. Our analysis shows that while such conditionality became more stringent following the Asian crisis, compliance has remained broadly unchanged, comparing unfavorably with other structural reforms. The...

This paper analyzes the monetary policy response to rising inflation in emerging and developing countries associated with the food and oil price shocks in 2007 and the first half of 2008. It reviews inflation developments in a sample of countries covering all regions and a broad range of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of current progress in financial sector reform and outline some of the remaining challenges. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents an analytical survey of recent developments. Findings – The reform agenda is broad,...

In this paper we investigate the main features of the Italian financial cycle, extracted by means of a structural trend-cycle decomposition of the credit-to-GDP ratio, using annual observations from 1861 to 2011. In order to draw conclusions based on solid historical data, we provide a thorough...

This paper analyses aggregate household wealth in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US. Building on a new data set for the time span 1980-2011, we discuss the trends in household financial assets in the last thirty years, the reasons for differences across countries,...