In 2008–09 the world experienced the most severe financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. The global financial crisis is attributed to a variety of factors, such as developments in the subprime mortgage sector, excessive leverage, lax financial regulation and supervision, and...

Reform of financial regulation is a priority on the international agenda. At the call of the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G-20), a number of new international standards have been issued, most notably Basel III. As a member of the G-20, the Financial Stability...

The Asian financial crisis (1997–1998) and the global financial crisis (2007–2009) highlighted the potential value of financial regionalism, i.e., regional-level cooperation in financial policy. This paper argues that there is a mediating role for regional-level institutions of financial...

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....

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...

The recent financial crisis has shown that financial innovation can have devastating systemic impacts. International standard setters’ and national regulators’ response has been a global concerted effort to overhaul and tighten financial regulations. However, at a time of designing stricter...

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...

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...

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...

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...