"Despite recently announced delays, Basel II--the new standard for bank capital--is due to be completed this year for implementation in the 13 Basel Committee member countries by the end of 2006. Should the other 170 plus member countries of the World Bank also adopt Basel II? Basel II was not...

"This paper documents the link between risk, stability, and access to credit markets in an emerging economy. It presents annual credit loss distributions of Chilean banks for the period 1999-2005, providing the first empirical evidence of the cyclical pattern of expected losses and unexpected...

"Powell, Mylenko, Miller, and Majnoni analyze how data in public credit registries can be used both to strengthen bank supervision and to improve the quality of credit analysis by financial institutions. Empirical tests using public credit registry (PCR) data were performed in collaboration with...

"Majnoni, Miller, and Powell propose an integrated approach to minimum bank capital and loan loss reserves regulation. They break new ground in two main areas. First, the authors provide an explicit measurement of the credit loss distribution for a sample of emerging countries providing a...

Most banks around the world delay provisioning for bad loans until it is too late, when cyclical downturns have already set in. The size and timing of loan loss provisions tend to improve with the level of economic development