What are liquidity crises? And what can be done to address them? This short paper brings together some personal reflections on this issue, largely based on previous work. In the process, it questions a number of commonly held beliefs that have become part of the conventional wisdom. The paper is...

This paper examines the power of different contractual mechanisms to influence an originator’s choice of costly effort to screen borrowers when the originator plans to securitise its loans. The analysis focuses on three potential mechanisms: the originator holds a “vertical slice”, or...

Over the last decade or so, addressing financial instability has become a policy priority. Despite the efforts made, policymakers are still a long way from developing a satisfactory operational framework. A major challenge complicating this task is the "fuzziness" with which financial...

In this paper we propose a framework for measuring and stress testing the systemic risk of a group of major financial institutions. The systemic risk is measured by the price of insurance against financial distress, which is based on ex ante measures of default probabilities of individual banks...

Few areas of monetary economics have been studied as extensively as the transmission mechanism. The literature on this topic has evolved substantially over the years, following the waxing and waning of conceptual frameworks and the changing characteristics of the financial system. In this paper,...

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...

The paper examines the basic rationale and features of the proposals adopted to separate specific investment and commercial banking activities (Volcker rule, Vickers and Liikanen proposals). In particular, it focuses on the likely implications of such initiatives for: (i) financial stability and...

It is high time we rediscovered the role of the financial cycle in macroeconomics. In the environment that has prevailed for at least three decades now, it is not possible to understand business fluctuations and the corresponding analytical and policy challenges without understanding the...

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, many regimes in Asia adopted stricter provisioning requirements, as well as discretionary measures, with the objective of increasing provisioning in good times in response to rising levels of risk. Based on a final sample of 240 banks in 12 Asian...

By the end of 2012, all standardized over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives must be cleared with central counterparties (CCPs). In this paper, we estimate the amount of collateral that CCPs should demand to clear safely all interest rate swap and credit default swap positions of the major...