Most explanations of the crisis of 2007-2009 emphasize the role of the preceding boom in real estate and asset markets in a variety of advanced countries. As a result, an idea that is gaining support among various groups is how to make Basel II or any regulatory regime less pro-cyclical. This...

Drawing on the lessons from the global financial crisis and especially from its impact on the banking systems of Eastern Europe, the paper proposes a new practical approach to macroprudential stress testing. The proposed approach incorporates: (i) macroeconomic stress scenarios generated from...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the macroeconomic implications of financial imperfections. It focuses on two major channels through which financial imperfections can affect macroeconomic outcomes. The first channel, which operates through the demand side of finance...

This paper surveys the literature on the linkages between asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes. It focuses on three major questions. First, what are the basic theoretical linkages between asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes? Second, what is the empirical evidence supporting these...

The global financial crisis has focused much attention on procyclicality, particularly in the context of a macroprudential framework. This paper reviews a set of prudential measures that can be adopted by national authorities to deal with procyclicality and discusses issues in designing and...

This paper is about the importance of the information in Public Credit Registries (PCRs) for supporting and improving banking sector regulation and supervision, particularly in the light of the new approach embodied in Basel III. Against the backdrop of the financial crisis and the existence of...

Deteriorating public finances around the world raise doubts about countries' abilities to bail out their largest banks. For an international sample of banks, this paper investigates the impact of government indebtedness and deficits on bank stock prices and credit default swap spreads. Overall,...

This paper examines changes in bank capital and capital regulations since the global financial crisis, in the Europe and Central Asia region. It shows that banks in Europe and Central Asia are better capitalized, as measured by regulatory capital ratios, than they were prior to the crisis....

This paper examines the factors that determine banking flows from advanced economies to emerging markets. In addition to the usual determinants of capital flows in terms of global push and local pull factors, it examines the role of bilateral factors, such as growth differentials and economic...

Using a multi-country panel of banks, the authors study whether better capitalized banks fared better in terms of stock returns during the financial crisis. They differentiate among various types of capital ratios: the Basel risk-adjusted ratio; the leverage ratio; the Tier I and Tier II ratios;...