The purpose of this study is to better understand the likely impact on Asian economies and financial institutions of various recent global financial reforms, including Basel III capital adequacy and liquidity rules. Overall, the authors find that the Basel III capital adequacy rules are likely...

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) bear some responsibility for the financial crisis that started in 2007 and remains ongoing. This is acknowledged by policymakers, market participants, and by the agencies themselves. It soon became clear that, given the depth of the crisis, CRAs would not be able to...

The failure to spot emerging systemic risk and prevent the current global financial crisis warrants a reexamination of the approach taken so far to crisis prevention. The paper argues that financial crises can be prevented, as they build up over time due to policy mistakes and eventually erupt...

This paper discusses the role of state intervention for prevention, containment, and resolution of financial crises based mainly on the Korean experience during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Crises in emerging market and developing economies tend to be more complicated than those faced by...

The Japanese government's response to the financial crisis in the 1990s was late, unprepared and insufficient; it failed to recognize the severity of the crisis, which developed slowly; faced no major domestic or external constraints; and lacked an adequate legal framework for bank resolution....

This paper analyzes the role and scope of macroprudential policy in preventing financial instability in the context of East Asian economies. It analyzes the behavior of the housing market in a dynamic setting to identify some of the factors responsible for the volatility of housing markets and...

In mid-September 2008, following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, international interbank markets froze and interbank lending beyond very short maturities virtually evaporated. Despite massive central bank support operations and purchases of key assets, many financial markets remained impaired...

This paper discusses how financial crises in emerging Asia and Japan worked as catalysts for legal reforms. Findings show that six Asian countries pursued significant legal and judicial reforms following financial crises in 1997–1998, but indicators that measure the quality of legal...

It is widely believed that the practice of securitization is one of the causes that led to the 2007–08 financial crisis. In this paper, I show that securitized products such as collateralized debt obligations (CDO) are particularly vulnerable to systematic risk and tend to show higher tail...

This paper surveys studies of the importance of Central Asian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the economy and their experience during the Russian financial crisis. It also uses survey data from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s Business Environment and...