In this brief, Biagio Bossone of the International Monetary Fund evaluates narrow banking from the perspective of modern theories of financial intermediation. These theories portray the status quo banking system as a solution to otherwise intractable problems of imperfect information, risk, and...

Over the past seventy years, the proposal to narrow the scope of banks has occurred more and more frequently in financial debates and research. Narrow banking would prevent deposit-issuing banks from lending to the private sector and restrict nonbank intermediaries from funding investments with...

Coping with the challenges of global economic governance is a topical issue of the current international agenda, and the object of a vivid debate among scholars and policy-makers. The international financial and economic crisis that erupted in 2007 reveals the fallibility of the neoliberal...