In this paper we describe systemic financial risk as a pollution issue. Free riding leads to excess risk production. This problem may be solved, at least partially, either with financial regulation or taxation. From a normative viewpoint taxation is superior in many respects. However, reality...

On June 4-5, 2014, SUERF and Baffi Finlawmetrics jointly organised a Colloquium/Conference "Money, Regulation and Growth: Financing New Growth in Europe" at Bocconi University, Milan. The present SUERF Study includes a selection of papers based on the authors’ contributions to the Milan event....

On May 11-12, 2011, SUERF, the Belgian Financial Forum, the Brussels Finance Institute and the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) jointly organised the 29th SUERF Colloquium New paradigms in money and finance? The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the...

We propose a path dependence approach to analyze the evolution of the financial supervisory architecture, focusing on the institutional role of the central bank, and then apply our framework to describe the institutional settings in a selected sample of countries. The policymaker who decides to...

Since the mid-1990s worldwide efforts were undertaken to improve the effectiveness of financial supervision, through modifications in the architecture and governance. Did these improvements mitigate the 2008–2009 Crisis? This paper brings the first systematic analysis of the role of three main...

After September 2001, the war against the financing of both terrorism and organized crime occupies the centre of the policy makers' agenda. This paper has a threefold objective. To better evaluate the design of the regulation and the supervision strategy, it reviews the economics of the...

By the early 2000s an increasing number of countries had adopted a well-defined central bank framework, characterized by two intertwined features: stronger specialization for the banking authority in achieving monetary policy goals, and a lessening of its traditional responsibilities for the...

This paper assesses the determinants of the recent wave of financial supervision reforms, reviewing six different views concerning the determinants of financial supervision architectures: economic view, market view, law view, political view, geography view and institutional view. The empirical...

Tax evasion and money laundering are conceptually closely related: they both entail some form of concealment. In the former case taxpayers do not fully declare the income which they have lawfully or unlawfully earned. With money laundering the ultimate objective is to disguise unlawful...

We empirically investigate whether central bank independence (CBI) and the monetary policy setting can jointly influence the likelihood that policymakers assign banking supervision to central banks. We find that, conditional on the government being a benevolent one, higher central bank...