April 2000 - Empirical results highlight the downside of imposing certain regulatory restrictions on commercial bank activities. Regulations that restrict banks' ability to engage in securities activities and to own nonfinancial firms are closely associated with more instability in the banking...

The recent global financial crisis has spurred renewed interest in identifying those reforms in bank regulation that would work best to promote bank development, performance and stability. Building upon three recent world-wide surveys on bank regulation (Barth et al., 2004, 2006, and 2008), we...

The contributors – top international scholars from finance, law and business – explore the role of governance, both internal and external, in explaining risk-taking and other aspects of the behavior of financial institutions. Additionally, they discuss market and policy features affecting...