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Cyber risk has emerged as a key threat to financial stability, following recent attacks on financial institutions. This paper presents a novel documentation of cyber risk around the world for financial institutions by analyzing the different types of cyber incidents (data breaches, fraud and business disruption) and identifying patterns using a variety of datasets. The other novel contribution that is outlined is a quantitative framework to assess cyber risk for the financial sector. The framework draws on a standard VaR type framework used to assess various types of stability risk and can be easily applied at the individual country level. The framework is applied in this paper to the available cross-country data and yields illustrative aggregated losses for the financial sector in the sample across a variety of scenarios ranging from 10 to 30 percent of net income.
In their efforts to strengthen the effectiveness of Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism Frameworks across the Nordic-Baltic Region (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden), the Governors of the Nordic-Baltic Central Banks reached out to the IMF to request technical assistance. The request stems from various international money laundering banking scandals (ABLV, Danske Bank, Nordea, Swedbank), involving cross-border payments by non-residents that exposed financial integrity risks in the financial sector of the region, attracting international scrutiny on the level of non-resident Money Laundering/Terrorist Financing ML/TF risks and hi...
This paper assesses liquidity risk for the United States (U.S.) bond mutual funds industry and performs a range of analyses to identify which fund categories are more vulnerable to distress than others, and how sales from funds can impact financial stability. We develop a new measure to identify vulnerable categories based on expected outflows labelled ‘Flows in Distress’. Overall, most U.S. mutual funds are resilient yet high yield (HY) and loan funds would face a liquidity shortfall when faced with severe redemption shocks. Combined sales from funds can have a sizeable price impact. Finally, our contagion analysis using data on fund flows and returns shows that Investment Grade (IG) corporate bonds funds, municipal bond funds and government bond funds are more likely to spread distress to other fund categories than HY, EM and loan funds. When the first type of funds experiences stress, other funds categories are likely to experience stress as well.
This paper evaluates the stability of the financial system of Luxembourg. Financial soundness indicators for Luxembourg’s financial system, which plays a key role in the intermediation of financial capital, have remained relatively robust in recent years. Following rising asset prices and inflows, the investment fund industry has enjoyed strong growth in assets under management, while exposure to liquid assets has remained steady. An assessment of the financial system’s ability to withstand severe but plausible shocks suggests a good deal of resilience, albeit with some risks. Insurance stress test results indicate that strong initial levels of capital and low guaranteed product exposure offer insulation against market shocks.
The October 2015 Global Financial Stability Report finds that, despite an improvement in financial stability in advanced economies, risks continue to rotate toward emerging markets. The global financial outlook is clouded by a triad of policy challenges: emerging market vulnerabilities, legacy issues from the crisis in advanced economies, and weak systemic market liquidity. With more vulnerable balance sheets in emerging market companies and banks, firms in these countries are more susceptible to financial stress, economic downturn, and capital outflows. Recent market developments such as slumping commodity prices, China’s bursting equity bubble, and pressure on exchange rates underscore t...
After a strong post-pandemic performance, economic activity has weakened. GDP contracted slightly in 2023. An unprecedented monetary policy tightening started in mid-2022 to rein in inflation, which has been declining after peaking at 10.8 percent in end-2022. Weak real incomes, elevated interest expenses, and declining real estate valuations have weighed on private consumption and residential investment and strained the highly levered commercial real estate sector. Policies need to carefully maneuver the economy. Strengthening productivity growth is a key medium-term challenge.
This paper focuses on smart policies that can alleviate the short-term pain of technological disruption and pave the way for long-term gain. As computing power improves dramatically and more and more people around the world participate in the digital economy, care should be taken about how to devise policies that will allow us to fully exploit the digital revolution’s benefits while minimizing job dislocation. Digital technology will spread further, and efforts to ignore it or legislate against it will likely fail. Even with short-term dislocations, reorganizing the economy around revolutionary technologies generates huge long-term benefits. The digital revolution should be accepted and improved rather than ignored and repressed. Given the global reach of digital technology, and the risk of a race to the bottom, there is a need for policy cooperation like that of global financial markets and sea and air traffic. The history of earlier general-purpose technologies demonstrates that even with short-term dislocations, reorganizing the economy around revolutionary technologies generates huge long-term benefits.
The October 2014 issue finds that six years after the start of the crisis, the global economic recovery continues to rely heavily on accommodative monetary policies in advanced economies. Monetary accommodation remains critical in supporting economies by encouraging economic risk taking in the form of increased real spending by households and greater willingness to invest and hire by businesses. However, prolonged monetary ease may also encourage excessive financial risk taking. Analytical chapters examine (1) the growth of shadow banking around the globe, assessing risks and discussing regulatory responses, and calling for a more encompassing (macroprudential) approach to regulation and for enhanced data provision; and (2) how conflicts of interest among bank managers, shareholders, and debt holders can lead to excessive bank risk taking from society’s point of view, finding no clear relation between bank risk and the level of executive compensation, but that a better alignment of bankers’ pay with long-term outcomes is associated with less risk.
This Selected Issues paper takes stock of structural reforms in Portugal from a firm-level perspective. Structural reforms were the main available policy tool to mend Portugal’s accumulated imbalances. Portugal’s macroeconomic toolbox was severely constrained by monetary union membership and spillover considerations. This paper discusses what structural reforms were supposed to achieve at the firm level. It documents a few stylized facts about Portuguese firms and describes the structural reform agenda. The paper also reports the results of a firm survey on the perceived effectiveness of the structural reforms.