The objective of this paper is to provide a balanced assessment of international cooperation among financial regulators, with a focus on banking supervision. While recognizing the undeniable – and even unexpected – achievements of these regulators in building a cooperative framework for...

What information about the financial condition of firms is conducive to efficient and stable operation of the financial system and of the economy more broadly? In this essay, we outline the contours of an ideal set of such information, identify existing gaps and propose a way forward to fill...

With the insight of 130 years of history, this paper tries to answer three questions: how did changing international monetary and financial conditions shape the targets and tools of central bank cooperation? What factors influenced its intensity? Did a structured organisation, such as the BIS,...

Central bank cooperation depends on a few crucial parameters: the extent to which central bankers agree on theory (end means relationships); the extent to which they can agree on goals (social purpose); the capacity (technical and institutional) to achieve their collective goals; and whether the...

We study the effects of the new Basel III liquidity regulations in jurisdictions with a limited supply of high-quality liquid assets. Using a model based on Bech and Keister (2013), we show how introducing a liquidity coverage ratio in such settings can have significant side effects, leading to...

This study outlines a methodology for mapping the increases in capital and liquidity requirements proposed under Basel III to bank lending spreads. The higher cost associated with a one percentage point increase in the capital ratio can be recovered by increasing lending spreads by 15 basis...

In addition to revamping existing rules for bank capital, Basel III introduces a new global framework for liquidity regulation. One part of this framework is the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR), which requires banks to hold sufficient high-quality liquid assets to survive a 30-day period of...

Bank capital ratios have increased steadily since the financial crisis. For a sample of 94 large banks from advanced and emerging economies, retained earnings account for the bulk of their higher risk-weighted capital ratios, with reductions in risk weights playing a lesser role. On average,...

We assess the long-term economic impact of the new regulatory standards (the Basel III reform), answering the following questions. (1) What is the impact of the reform on long-term economic performance? (2) What is the impact of the reform on economic fluctuations? (3) What is the impact of the...

Using data from 57 countries spanning more than three decades, this paper investigates the effectiveness of nine non-interest rate policy tools, including macroprudential measures, in stabilising house prices and housing credit. In conventional panel regressions, housing credit growth is...