This policy brief examines issues associated with the design and implementation of regulatory policymaking in interconnected financial markets. The policy brief explains why international interdependence among nations' financial markets and regulations can provide an incentive for national...

Using a unique hand collected sample of professional connections between finance ministers and the directors and top executives of the three largest credit rating agencies for 38 European sovereigns between January 2000 and November 2017, we show that professional connections result in higher...

Using 311 sovereign rating actions by the three leading global rating agencies between January and August 2020, we show that severity of sovereign ratings actions is not affected by the intensity of the COVID-19 health crisis (proxied by case and mortality rates). We find that economic...

Among the countries currently considering issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC), including nearly all of G20, there is a strong preference for a retail CBDC made available to the general public through private intermediaries. This Policy Brief sheds light on the technical complexities...

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), established by the Dodd-Frank Act, has the extraordinary authority to designate financial firms as systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). Firms so designated are then turned over to the Fed for “stringent” regulation. FSOC's...

Michael D. Bordo has helped to define the modern field of monetary history, drawing from it important policy lessons for current practitioners. For his seventieth year, we survey his contributions to our understanding of the Great Depression, money and the economy in historical perspective,...

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), established by the Dodd-Frank Act, has the extraordinary authority to designate financial firms as systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). Firms so designated are then turned over to the Fed for “stringent” regulation. FSOC’s...

Securitization is considered to be one of the biggest financial innovations of the last century. It is also regarded as both a catalyst and solution to the 2008 financial crisis. Once a popular method of financing the mortgage and consumer credit markets, aspects of the global securitization...

Securitization is considered to be one of the biggest financial innovations of the last century. It is also regarded as both a catalyst and solution to the 2008 financial crisis. Once a popular method of financing the mortgage and consumer credit markets, aspects of the global securitization...

It was everyone's worst nightmare; the spectre of systemic collapse. And this time, everyone was in it together. The complexity of modern financial instruments was one obvious culprit. Centuries old legal principles, such as the notion of "insurable interest", were also cast aside; old fashioned...