Lessons from Latvia's banking crisis can be applied in other transition economies.In the spring of 1995, Latvia experienced the largest banking crisis in the former Soviet Union to date, involving the loss of about 40 percent of the banking system's assets and liabilities. Fleming and Talley...

November 1999 - In the past, financial supervision tended to be organized around specialist agencies for the banking, securities, and insurance sectors. In recent years, several countries have moved toward integrating these different supervisory functions in a single agency. Drawing on Northern...

Drawing on Northern European experience - where three Scandinavian countries have practiced integrated supervision for the past 10 years - the authors address three policy-related issues associated with the integrated model: a) Under what conditions should (or should not) a country consider...

In the spring of 1995, Latvia experienced the largest banking crisis in the Former Soviet Union to date, involving the loss of about 40 percent of the banking system's assets and liabilities. The authors outline the Latvian authorities'strategy for developing the banking system and identify how...

The authors compare the banking crises experienced in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, examining the causes, effects, and policy responses. Estonia and Lithuania reconstituted the specialized Soviet banks as national state banks and began to privatize them. Latvia, by contrast, reconstituted the...