Banks will want to influence the bank regulator to favor their interests, and they typically have the means to do so. It is shown that such 'regulatory capture' in banking does not imply ineffectual regulation; a 'captured' regulator may impose very tight, costly prudential requirements to...

It is shown that the inefficiencies created by the quot;softquot; budget constraint, enjoyed by enterprises in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, will continue so long as governments are unable credibly to threaten not to bail out loss-makers. Commitment to a quot;hardquot; budget constraint can best...

The profound structural reform underway in Eastern Europe has revealed the weakness of the banking sector there; macroeconomic stability and other reforms are thereby threatened. After an overview of recent developments in the banking sectors of these countries, a model is developed that...

Reserve requirements are widely used by central banks as a means to improve monetary control, an instrument for policy implementation, a source of revenue, and a safeguard of bank liquidity. The effectiveness of reserve requirements in fulfilling these functions is reviewed, and the detailed...

This paper examines episodes of the banking system distress and crisis in a large sample of countries. The empirical results identify several macroeconomic and financial variables as useful leading indicators. The main macroeconomic indicators were of limited value in predicting the Asian...

Market reaction to a change in official interest rates will depend on the extent to which the change is anticipated, and on how it is interpreted as a signal of future policy. In this paper, a technique is developed to separate the anticipated and unanticipated components of such changes and is...

A central bank must decide on the frequency with which it will conduct open market operations and the variability in short-term money market that it will allow. It is shown how the optimal operating procedure balances the value of attaining an immediate target and broadcasting the central bank`s...

It is shown how the frequency of central bank intervention in financial markets can affect the incentives for economic agents to acquire information, which will be reflected in market prices and thus become available to policy makers. The optimal frequency of intervention, and therefore the...

Pakistan undertook major financial sector reforms starting in the late 1980s. The effects of these reforms on the profitability and cost and revenue efficiency of the banking sector are evaluated. The revenue performance of all banks, and especially the privatized banks, improved significantly,...