Does a shortage of safe assets sow the seeds of instability in a financial system? This paper empirically explores the hypothesis of safe asset shortage-induced excess credit booms and financial instability. As an alternative step forward from the assumption of growth- or wealth-based demands...

Japan's "two lost decades" perhaps represent an extreme example of a weak recovery from a financial crisis, and are now referred to as "Japanization." More recently, widespread stagnation in advanced economies in the wake of the global financial crisis led to fears that Japanization might spread...

I analyze the risks in the banking systems in East Asia using the standard supervisory framework, which assesses capital adequacy, asset quality, management, earnings, and liquidity (CAMEL), I find that banking systems in the region are sound, but that the short-term outlook is negative. Second,...

This study gives an overview of recent innovations in the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Asia. While SMEs are an important contributor to employment and gross domestic product in Asia, they often face significant credit constraints. Recently, in the context of Asia's...

This paper sheds light on Australia's fast real-time retail payments system, the New Payments Platform (NPP), which was launched in February 2018 by a consortium of 13 financial institutions, including the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). The NPP operates on a 24/7 basis and allows financial...

While discussing the enhancement of the connectivity between Europe and Asia, this policy paper explores a new area of cooperation, which is the use of European long-term investment funds in Asia's infrastructure. We argue that, if Asian countries agree to offer 50% of their spillover revenue to...

This paper reviews research on the origins of the financial crisis of 2008–2009, highlights the key events that triggered a financial panic in September 2008, and summarizes the extraordinary policy actions the United States (US) has taken to ameliorate the crisis. We discuss the proximate...

With the global economy still in recession, two important questions arise for Asia: how soon will the recession end, and how vigorous will the region's recovery be? The purpose of this paper is to look at past recessions and recoveries in Asia in order to shed light on these issues. Several...

India's financial sector is not deeply integrated with the global financial system, which spared it the first round adverse effects of the global financial crisis and left Indian banks mostly unaffected. However, as the financial crisis morphed in to a full-blown global economic downturn, India...

This paper seeks to add to the current debate about financial development and growth in the emerging world by looking at how different financial systems evolve: how and why financial structures change during various stages of development, how best to measure them, and seeing what practical...