This paper presents Detailed Assessment of the United States’s observance of Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision. The U.S. financial system is large and highly diversified. At the end-2007, total U.S. financial assets amounted to almost four and a half times the size...

Ukraine was one of the countries hardest hit by the global economic and financial crisis; it was also one of the first countries supported by a Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). The Ex Post Evaluation of Exceptional Access Under the 2008 SBA reveals that the achievement of program objectives was...

This paper documents global trends in bank activity, consolidation, internationalization, and financial firm conglomeration, and explores the extent to which financial firm risk and systemic risk potential in banking are related to consolidation and conglomeration. We find that while there is a...

This paper reviews the nature of central bank involvement in 26 episodes of financial disturbance and crises in Latin America from the mid-1990s onwards. It finds that, except in a handful of cases, large amounts of central bank money were used to cope with large and small crises alike. Pouring...

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...

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...

Soon after Korea agreed to an IMF-supported program, Seoul Bank and Korea First Bank were nationalized through an injection of public funds by the government. The two banks were singled out early in the IMF-supported program to be sold to foreign investors. Korea First Bank was sold to foreign...

The paper assesses the degree of banking competition and efficiency in Italy?over time as well as compared to that in other countries, such as France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The paper finds competition in the Italian banking sector has intensified in loan and...

We bring to bear a hand-collected dataset of executive turnovers in U.S. banks to test the efficacy of market discipline in a 'laboratory setting' by analyzing banks that are less likely to be subject to government support. Specifically, we focus on a new face of market discipline: stakeholders'...