The failure to spot emerging systemic risk and prevent the current global financial crisis warrants a reexamination of the approach taken so far to crisis prevention. The paper argues that financial crises can be prevented, as they build up over time due to policy mistakes and eventually erupt...

Under Basel III, the current international banking regulation, banks must maintain two Tier 1 capital ratios that treat risky assets differently. The Basel Committee uses the critical average risk weight (CARW) framework developed by the Bank of England to determine which ratio is the binding...