During the 2007-2010 financial crisis, central banks accumulated a vast amount of experience in acting as lender of last resort. This paper reviews the various ways that central banks provided emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) during the crisis, and discusses issues for the design of ELA...

Collateral markets have become increasingly important as demand for collateral assets has increased in recent years, driven by changing market practices and an evolving regulatory landscape. This report explores whether and how the design of central banks' operational frameworks influences...

In some recent studies, the question of the origins of central banking has been revisited, suggesting that beyond Swedish and British central banking, a number of earlier European continental institutions would also have played an important role. However, it has often been difficult to access...

The holy grail of cross-border payments is a solution allowing cross-border payments to be immediate, cheap, universal, and settled in a secure settlement medium. The search for such a solution is as old as international commerce and the implied need to pay. This paper describes current visions...

Basel III introduces for the first time an international framework for liquidity risk regulation, reflecting the experience of excessive liquidity risk taking of banks in the run up to the financial crisis that erupted in August 2007, and associated negative externalities. As central banks play...