The great moderation lulled macroeconomists and policymakers alike in the belief that we knew how to conduct macroeconomic policy. The crisis clearly forces us to question that assessment. In this paper, we review the main elements of the pre-crisis consensus, we identify where we were wrong and...

We provide a theoretical foundation for the claim that prolonged periods of easy monetary conditions increase bank risk taking. The net effect of a monetary policy change on bank monitoring (an inverse measure of risk taking) depends on the balance of three forces: interest rate pass-through,...

We test for the existence of a moral hazard effect attributable to official crisis lending by analyzing the evolution of sovereign bond spreads in emerging markets before and after the Russian crisis. The nonbailout of Russia in August 1998 is interpreted as an event that decreased the perceived...

A study of 53 countries during 1980-95 finds that financial liberalization increases the probability of a banking crisis, but less so where the institutional environment is strong. In particular, respect for the rule of law, a low level of corruption, and good contract enforcement are relevant...

Foreign banks have greatly increased their presence in emerging market countries in recent years. This paper compares the performance of domestic banks and a long-established group of foreign banks during the recent crisis in Malaysia. We find that the sharpest differences are between banks...

SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum, the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS) took the opportunity of the first anniversary of this new institution to organise a joint conference in Berlin on 8-9 November 2011. The purpose of this event was...

We track direct public interventions and public holdings in 1,114 financial institutions over the period 2007-17 in 37 countries based on publicly available information. We use aggregate official data to validate this new dataset and estimate the fiscal impact of interventions, including the...