This Occasional Paper reviews financial stability challenges in countries preparing for EU membership with a candidate country status, i.e. Croatia (planned to accede to the EU on 1 July 2013), Iceland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Turkey. It follows a...

This paper reviews financial stability challenges in the EU candidate countries: Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey. It follows a macro-prudential approach, emphasising systemic risks and the stability of financial systems as a whole. The paper recalls that the...

The theoretical literature gives conflicting predictions on how bank competition should affect financial stability, and dozens of researchers have attempted to evaluate the relationship empirically. We collect 598 estimates of the competitionstability nexus reported in 31 studies and analyze the...

This paper studies the domestic and international effects of national bank market integration in a two-country, dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium model with endogenous producer entry. Integration of banking across localities reduces the degree of local monopoly power of financial...

In emerging Asia, banks constitute the dominant source of financing consumption and investment, and bank balance sheets comprise large gross FX assets and liabilities. This paper extends the DSGE model of Gertler and Karadi (2011) to incorporate these key features and estimates a panel vector...

Increasing capital inflows and sustained interest rate spreads were important features in East Asia prior to the crisis of 1997-98. But why did capital inflows fail to eliminate interest rate differentials? Why were inflows associated with rising domestic interest rates that then perpetuated the...

This paper finds a strong empirical link between domestic banking sector competitiveness and de facto international integration. De-facto international integration is measured through a new index of financial integration, which measures, for deviations from covered interest parity, the size of...

Based on a unique dataset of legislative changes in industrial countries, we identify events that strengthen the competition control of mergers and acquisitions, analyze their impact on banks and non-financial firms and explain the different reactions observed with specific regulatory...

There is a long-standing debate about the special nature of banks. Based on a unique dataset of legislative changes in industrial countries, we identify events that strengthen competition policy, analyze their impact on banks and non-financial firms and explain the reactions observed with...