Under the new Basle Capital Accords, regulation takes the form of a contingency rule prescribing a certain level of bank capital contingent on the bank's risk taking behaviour in choosing its asset portfolio. In a simple dynamic model of banking with binding regulation we show that such Basle II...

In a dynamic framework banks compete for customers by setting lending conditions for the loans they supply, taking into account the capital adequacy requirements posed by the regulator. By easing its lend- ing conditions a bank faces a tradeoff between attracting more demand for loans, thus...

We study the effects of Central Bank transparency on inflation and the output gap. We thus identify a small analytical model which concludes that transparency affects the variability of inflation and output and not their average levels. Then we examine whether this conjecture holds empirically,...

We provide a framework for analysing the choice between optimal and robust rules in the presence of paradigm uncertainty in monetary policy. We thus provide two issues: first, we discuss the conditions of uncertainty that render a robust rule a preferable substitute to optimal rules and second,...

Correlation between the risks of portfolios of different commercial banks leads to too much risk taking from a social planner's perspective. The presence of a regulator omproves this risk-benefit allocation of the financial system. In this paper I show that first-best regulation also leads to...

Correlation between the risks of portfolios of different commercial banks leads to too much risk taking from a social planner's perspective. The presence of a regulator improves this risk-benefit allocation of the financial system. In this paper I show that first-best regulation also leads to...

The independent nature of the Central Bank is often associated with achieving low and stable inflation. Further to that the merits of independence are stretched to achieving low(er) output variability when compared to a government run monetary policy. In this paper we use the Alesina and Alesina...