In the aftermath of the financial crisis, governments are rightly reducing their exposure to the banking system. Bail-in arrangements should ensure that shareholders and creditors take the first losses. The next line of defence is a resolution fund, which is filled via levies on banks....

This essay reviews the sequencing of the functions of supervision, resolution, deposit insurance and the fiscal backstop in the Banking Union. All these functions deal with the soundness of individual banks. In the run-up to the 2007-2009 financial crisis, we overlooked the bigger picture of the...

This paper focuses on the recapitalisation of failing banks. A recapitalisation is efficient if the social benefits (preserving systemic stability) exceed the cost of recapitalisation. In a national setting, the implementation of an optimal policy is relatively straightforward. But in a...

Pan-European banks are starting to emerge, while arrangements for financial supervision and stability are still nationally rooted. This raises the issue who should bear the burden of any proposed recapitalisation should failures occur in a large cross-border bank. A recapitalisation is efficient...

This paper presents a model to analyse alternative interbank settlement systems. Intraday credit exposures in netting systems generate systemic risk (the failure by one bank to settle at the end of the day may cause a chain of bank failures). To prevent this, mutual loss-sharing is implemented....

The handling of cross-border banks in difficulties gives rise to coordination problems between home and host countries. Goodhart and Schoenmaker (2006, 2009) have suggested to implement an ex ante burden sharing mechanism to overcome the co-ordination failure of national authorities. While...

We propose a regulatory approach for restricting debt financing as an amplification mechanism across the financial system. A small stylised model illustrates the trade-off between static and time varying limits on leverage in dampening the financial cycle. The policy section proposes its...

The stability of a banking system ultimately depends on the strength and credibility of the fiscal backstop. While large countries can still afford to resolve large global banks on their own, small and medium-sized countries face a policy choice. This paper investigates the impact of resolution...

In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, regulators have rushed to strengthen banking supervision and implement bank resolution regimes. While such resolution regimes are welcome to reintroduce market discipline and reduce the reliance on taxpayer-funded bailouts, the effects on the wider...

European Union countries offer a unique experience of financial regulatory and supervisory integration, complementing various other European integration efforts following the second world war. Financial regulatory and supervisory integration was a very slow process before 2008, despite...