The UK financial market has been severely affected by the recent financial crisis. The crisis has exposed weaknesses in the supervisory framework as well as that for crisis management and resolution. This paper reviews the supervisory and regulatory framework and the many reforms that have...

Policy efforts to revitalise entrepreneurship and investment in Spain are key to generating growth and new jobs. The government has a substantial reform program to make it easier to do business in Spain, which should in some cases be deepened. Boosting economic growth requires a new generation...

The global financial and economic crisis has struck Iceland with extreme force. Iceland’s three main banks, accounting for almost all of the banking system, failed in October 2008. They were unable to resist the deterioration in global financial markets following the failure of Lehman...

The financial sector has emerged as the main economic engine over the past two decades. The comparative advantages of placing financial activities in Luxembourg have mostly been in terms of an adaptive legislative and regulatory framework and low taxation. As a result, Luxembourg is today one of...

This paper aims at providing an overview of the theoretical considerations and a review of the empirical literature on the relationship between finance and growth. Section I describes the role of financial development in economic growth at the macro level, both theoretically and empirically....

Ireland is recovering from an extremely large banking crisis born of over-exuberant property lending. The government has taken a wide range of measures to tackle the crisis over the past 3 years. Larger bad property loans have been transferred to a government controlled “bad bank”, NAMA, and...

Entrepreneurship is an important driver of economic growth, job creation and competitiveness. However, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) sector has been severely affected by the crisis, with access to bank finance being particularly difficult. Various government-sponsored schemes have...

Bank regulation might have contributed to or even reinforced adverse systemic shocks that materialised during the financial crisis. Capital regulation based on risk-weighted assets encourages innovation designed to circumvent regulatory requirements and shifts banks’ focus away from their core...

The 2008-09 global financial crisis did not result in the failure of any major financial institution in Israel, but it did reveal vulnerabilities in the non-banking sector . particularly in the corporate-bond market. Conservative regulation of the banking sector helped this segment avoid a...

The global crisis exposed weaknesses in the Hungarian financial system that pose risks to financial stability. Excessive risk-taking by banks and households had been masked by relatively stable exchange rates, the expected early adoption of the euro and unusually lax credit conditions in...