Has economic research been helpful in dealing with the financial crises of the early 2000s? On the whole, the answer is negative, although there are bright spots. Economists have largely failed to predict both crises, largely because most of them were not analytically equipped to understand...

This paper examines capital adequacy regulation in Germany. After a short overview about financial regulation in Germany in general, the paper focuses on the most important development in the area of capital adequacy regulation from the 1930s up to the financial crisis. Two main trends are...

Objectives-based legislation - or laws which focus on achieving particular and concrete outcomes - has become a new and important tool that financial sector regulators use to tackle large and varied financial system risks. Yet, objectives-based legislation - and the frequent principles-based...

Despite a heated debate on the perceived increasing complexity of financial regulation, there is no available measure of regulatory complexity other than the mere length of regulatory documents. To fill this gap, we propose to apply simple measures from the computer science literature by...

We summarize and evaluate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's credit risk transfer (CRT) programs, which have been used since 2013 to shift a portion of credit risk on more than $1.8 trillion of mortgages to private sector investors. We argue that the CRT programs have been successful in reducing the...

The main objective of this paper is to suggest reform measures to address the gaps and weaknesses in emerging Asia's financial regulatory and supervisory systems, on the basis of lessons drawn from the global crisis. For emerging Asia, the direct impact of the global financial crisis has been...

In the wake of the global financial crisis that erupted in 2008, there has been extensive commentary and regulatory focus on the 'Too Big to Fail' issue. In this paper, we survey the proposed solutions and regulatory initiatives that have been undertaken. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of...

On September 3-4, 2009, SUERF and Utrecht University School of Economics jointly organized the 28th SUERF Colloquium on "The Quest for Stability" in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The papers contained in this SUERF Study jointly published with DNB and Rabobank are based on contributions to this...

Life insurers' odds of being placed under regulatory control (for example, conservatorship or receivership) during the financial crisis years of 2008 and 2009 increased with deteriorating fundamentals at a much higher rate than during normal times or during the previous recession. However, no...

Never before has finance been regarded with the suspicion of these past three years. Yet money and credit are part of what enabled human beings to overcome the barbarism of immanence, the savagery of a life ruled by consumption for survival. The critical rethinking of finance involves the very...