The International Monetary Fund (IMF) played a ground-breaking role in understanding the financial-sector dynamics of the euro-area crisis. It was the first public authority, and one of the first more generally, to acknowledge the role of the bank-sovereign vicious circle as the central driver...

China's recent emergence as a leading global economic and financial powerhouse has implications for all aspects of global governance. While a growing body of literature has analysed the consequences for international trade arrangements, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Multilateral...

The banking crisis in the euro area, which started in mid-2007 and has yet to be fully resolved, has sparked considerable debate and reform, most notably the initiation of banking union starting in mid-2012. But one issue that has been largely overlooked in the debate is the peculiar ownership...

The combination of banking union and Brexit justifies a reform of the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in the near term, in line with the subsidiarity principle. The other EU-level financial authorities, namely the European Insurance and...

The Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) of 2014, together with the initiation of banking union in the euro area, represent a regime change in EU banking sector policy. The BRRD replaces the prior assumption of public reimbursement of a failing bank’s claimants (or bail-out) with one...

The depiction of the euro area/European Union (EU) as a "fourfold union" (financial union, fiscal union, economic union, political union) emerged in the first half of 2012 at the height of the euro-area crisis. It was primarily shaped by the recognition of the bank-sovereign vicious circle and...

The deepening and integration of the European Union’s capital markets is a long-term structural endeavour. Although difficult to achieve, it is worthwhile for several reasons: a meaningful body of economic analysis strongly suggests that purely bank-based financial systems are more prone to...

A series of banking scandals in multiple European Union countries including Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom has underlined the shortcomings of the European Union’s anti-money laundering (AML) regime. Many of these cases have involved staggering...

The euro-area crisis, which nearly destroyed Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 2011-12, was a result of perverse incentives and inadequate institutions. The perverse incentives included excessive implicit national guarantees of domestic banks, and a lack of clarity on what would...

The European Union’s financial supervisory architecture is based on a sectoral model with separate authorities for banking, insurance and securities and markets. New developments in the EU financial sector make this sectoral structure increasingly out of date: •Brexit creates a need for...