This detailed assessment of the observance of standards and codes in the financial sector of the Kingdom of the Netherlands—Netherlands Antilles reviews implementation of the Basel Core Principles for effective banking. Legal provisions are in place entrusting the Bank of the Netherlands...

This paper provides the first empirical analysis of the cross-country relationship between a direct measure of competitive conduct of financial institutions and banking system fragility. Using the Panzar and Rosse H-Statistic as a measure for competition in 38 countries during 1980-2003, we...

A review of the experience of five developing countries in reforming their financial systems illustrates the benefits and risks, and provides lessons on the factors which contribute to successful financial sector reforms. Financial sector reforms need to be supported by active monetary policy,...

Losses may accrue to depositors at insolvent banks both at and after the time of official resolution. Losses at resolution occur because of poor closure rules and regulatory forbearance. Losses after resolution occur if depositors' access to their claims is delayed or "frozen." While the sources...

The global financial crisis has highlighted the importance of early identification of weak banks: when problems are identified late, solutions are much more costly. Until recently, Europe has seen only a small number of outright bank failures, which made the estimation of early warning models...

This paper defines a set of banking stability measures which take account of distress dependence among the banks in a system, thereby providing a set of tools to analyze stability from complementary perspectives by allowing the measurement of (i) common distress of the banks in a system, (ii)...

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...

This study investigates the relationship between production efficiency in financial intermediation and financial system size. The study predicts and tests for the existence of "systemic scale economies" (SSEs), whereby value-maximizing intermediaries operating in large systems are expected to...

This paper reviews tools used to identify and measure interconnectedness and raises the awareness of policymakers as to potential cross-sectional implications of prudential tools aimed at controlling interconnectedness. The paper examines two sets of tools—developed at the IMF and...

The global financial crisis has placed the spotlight squarely on bank stress tests. Stress tests conducted in the lead-up to the crisis, including those by IMF staff, were not always able to identify the right risks and vulnerabilities. Since then, IMF staff has developed more robust stress...