This Selected Issues paper for Chile assesses the impact of the global financial crisis on Chilean banks. It provides a framework for analyzing government measures aimed at reducing systemic risk. The analysis suggests that Chilean banks are resilient to global and regional shocks. However, even...

This paper develops a simple model of an international lender of last resort (ILOLR). The world economy consists of many open economies, each with a banking system and a central bank operating under a pegged exchange rate regime. The fragility of the banking system and the limited ability of a...

This paper investigates whether Indonesia’s recent currency crisis was due to domestic fundamentals, common external shocks (“monsoons”), or contagion from neighboring countries. Markov-switching models attribute speculative pressure on Indonesia’s currency to domestic political and...

Portfolio credit risk measurement is greatly affected by data constraints, especially when focusing on loans given to unlisted firms. Standard methodologies adopt convenient, but not necessarily properly specified parametric distributions or simply ignore the effects of macroeconomic shocks on...

This paper suggests a strategy designed to make best use of the available quantitative techniques of financial sector assessment. It incorporates early warning systems, financial sector forecasts, stress tests for systemically important financial institutions, interbank contagion analysis, and...

We develop a theoretical framework that encompasses four distinct motives for dollarization and discuss appropriate policy responses to help contain dollarization and its attendant risks. "Moral hazard" dollarization provides a clear case for prudential policy activism. However, prudential...

Determinants of central banks' profitability are studied using a statistical analysis of their balance sheets, country characteristics, and the macroeconomic and institutional environments in which they operate. Central banks at both tails of the distribution of profits generally operate in...

This paper studies whether the policies that, over the past decades, liberalized bankingsystems around the world have resulted in deeper credit markets. To measure banking sectorreforms we use a new index that tracks policy changes in five separate areas for 91 countriesover 1973-2005. We find...

This paper uses a Merton-type estimate of the probability of default (PoD) for the main banks in a sample of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and middle-income countries as a proxy for the fragility of their banking systems. Based on theory and stylized facts, the paper...

The large and growing international linkages of big Irish banks expose them to idiosyncratic shocks arising in other countries. We analyze international interdependencies of Irish banks-during both normal times and in periods of large shocks or extreme events-using an existing methodology with...