The recovery in GDP growth since the global financial crisis has been halting and weak. Concern is widespread that countercyclical policies have run out of space or lack the power to raise growth or deal with the next negative shock. This note argues that room exists for effective policies and...

This paper investigates empirically the drivers of financial imbalances ahead of the global financial crisis. Three factors may have contributed to the build-up of financial imbalances: (i) rising global imbalances (capital flows), (ii) monetary policy that might have been too loose, (iii)...

This paper provides an analysis of the competitive process in the market for personal current accounts in the United Kingdom. Using survey data, we first describe some stylised developments in this market over our sample period (1996-2001). We find a gradual change in the distribution of market...

Systemic risk is a key concern for central banks charged with safeguarding overall financial stability. In this paper we investigate how systemic risk is affected by the structure of the financial system. We construct banking systems that are composed of a number of banks that are connected by...

This paper takes a new approach to assess the costs and benefits of using different policy tools-macroprudential, monetary, foreign exchange interventions, and capital flow management-in response to changes in financial conditions. The approach evaluates net benefits of policies using quadratic...

This paper introduces a new comprehensive database of macroprudential policies, which combines information from various sources and covers 134 countries from January 1990 to December 2016. Using these data, we first confirm that loan-targeted instruments have a significant impact on household...