This paper explains that financial safety nets exist because of difficulties in enforcing contracts and shows that elements of deposit-insurance schemes differ substantially across countries. It argues that differences in the design of financial safety nets correlate significantly with...

Now in prospect is a major revision of international bank capital regulations that would embody recent advances in credit risk measurement and management. Previous regulations have been simpler in structure, with a primary goal of getting capital requirements right on average, and thus have...

Regulation consists of rulemaking and enforcement. Economic theory offers two complementary rationales for regulating financial institutions. Altruistic public-benefits theories treat rules as governmental instruments for increas- ing fairness and efficiency across society as a whole....

New security designs, improvements in computer telecommunications technology and advances in the theory of finance have led to revolutionary changes in the structure of financial markets and institutions. This paper provides a functional perspective on the dynamics of institutional change and...

In recent years the possibility of an international financial crisis has increased because of greater liquidity of international financial markets, an increase in corporate indebtedness and the decline of the banking industry. Using an asymmetric information analysis, this paper outlines what...

We characterize how U.S. global systemically important banks (GSIBs) supply short-term dollar liquidity in repo and foreign exchange swap markets in the post-Global Financial Crisis regulatory environment and serve as the "lenders-of-second-to-last-resort". Using daily supervisory bank balance...

We study the resolution of global banks by national regulators. Single-point-of-entry (SPOE) resolution, where loss-absorbing capital is shared across jurisdictions, is efficient but may not be implementable. First, when expected transfers across jurisdictions are too asymmetric, national...

This essay shows that government credit-allocation schemes generate incentive conflicts that undermine the quality of bank supervision and eventually produce banking crisis. For political reasons, most countries establish a regulatory culture that embraces three economically contradictory...

This paper identifies factors that influence decisions about a country's financial safety net, using a comprehensive dataset covering 180 countries during the 1960-2003 period. Our analysis focuses on how private interest-group pressures, outside influences, and political-institutional factors...

Even after controlling for local economic conditions, differences in state bank supervision and regulation contribute toward explaining the large variation in state bank suspension rates across U.S. counties during the Great Depression. More stringent capital requirements lowered suspension...