We reexamine the common argument that rules produce greater credibility than discretion. Rules limit the actions of agents, restricting observations of the agents' preferences or types. In a second-best world, where rules cannot be everlasting, a regime of discretion in some periods may produce...

The study seeks to provide a critique of the theoretical framework of economic governance as it relates to the financial sector in Zimbabwe and identify institutions in the financial sector and explain their roles. It also seeks to unpack the concepts related to the banking or the financial...

We test if unconventional monetary policy instruments influence the competitive conduct of banks. Between q2:2010 and q1:2012, the ECB absorbed e218 billion worth of government securities from five EMU countries under the Securities Markets Programme (SMP). Using detailed security holdings data...

Over millennia, mankind has used hard cash in various forms ranging from shells to gold coins and paper. More recently, cash has become unpopular in political circles, as it effectively restricts states’ power to tax (explicitly or via negative interest rates) or to survey and potentially...

This paper models the strategic interaction between a rating agency, a bank and a bank regulator who lacks information about bank asset risk. The regulator can either (1) make bank capital requirements contingent on credit ratings; or (2) set rating-independent capital requirements. Truthful...

As reliance on excessively short-term wholesale funding has been one of the major causes for the 2007-2009 financial crisis, recent advances in global liquidity regulation try to curb the excessive reliance on short-term wholesale funding without being clear on how such an approach will affect...

Prudential regulation of banks is multi-layered: policy changes by home-country authorities affect banks' global operations across many jurisdictions; changes by host-country authorities shape banks' operations in the host jurisdiction regardless of the nationality of the parent bank. Which...

We examine the hold-up problem of price regulation and compare it with the monetary policy credibility problem. For both, reputational solutions are possible provided that the policymaker is sufficiently far-sighted, but the hold-up problem in regulation turns out to be more serious than the...

After the onset of the Great Recession in 2008 the Federal Reserve engaged in very expansionary monetary policy, which resulted in near zero interest rates on short-term securities. This policy, together with record fiscal deficits, failed to restore full employment as historic experiences would...

Recent studies investigate policies motivating consumers to make an active choice as a way to protect unsophisticated consumers. We analyse the optimal timing of such choice-enhancing policies when a firm can strategically react to them. In our model, a firm provides an automatic enrollment or...