This study finds that equity returns in the banking sector in the wake of the Great Recession and the European sovereign debt crisis have been driven mainly by weak growth prospects and heightened sovereign risk and to a lesser extent, by deteriorating funding conditions and investor sentiment....

The 1988 Basel I Accord set the common requirements of bank capital to promote the soundness and stability of the international banking system. The agreement required banks to hold capital in proportion to their perceived credit risks, and this requirement may have caused a “credit crunch,”...

We examine the role of bank balance sheet strength in the transmission of financial sector shocks to the real economy. Using data from the syndicated loan market, we exploit variation in banks’ reliance on wholesale funding and their structural liquidity positions in 2007Q2 to estimate the...

The recent crisis has spurred the use of stress tests as a (crisis) management and early warning tool. However, a weakness is that they omit potential risks embedded in the banking groups’ geographical structures by assuming that capital and liquidity are available wherever they are...

The paper finds that, given New Zealand’s conservative approach in implementing the Basel II framework, New Zealand banks’ headline capital ratios underestimate their capital strength. A comparison with Canadian, UK and Australian banks highlights the impact of New Zealand’s...

Credibility is the bedrock of any crisis stress test. The use of stress tests to manage systemic risk was introduced by the U.S. authorities in 2009 in the form of the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program. Since then, supervisory authorities in other jurisdictions have also conducted similar...

Financial sector reforms are being considered to address the risks posed by large and complex financial institutions (LCFIs). The vast majority of global finance is intermediated by a handful of these institutions with growing interconnections within and across borders. Common trends that...

This note overviews macroprudential policy options that have been proposed to address the systemic risks experienced during the recent financial crisis. It contributes to the policy debate by providing a taxonomy of macroprudential policies in terms of the specific negative externalities in the...

Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience...

The paper proposes a simple, new, analytical framework for assessing the cost and benefits of macroprudential policies. It proposes a measure of net benefits in terms of parameters that can be estimated: the probability of crisis, the loss in output given crisis, policy effectiveness in bringing...