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A multi-faceted look at what global central bank cooperation has - and has not - achieved over the past half century.
With the insight of 130 years of history, this paper tries to answer three questions: how did changing international monetary and financial conditions shape the targets and tools of central bank cooperation? What factors influenced its intensity? Did a structured organisation, such as the BIS, make a difference to its effectiveness? We show that while central bank cooperation through history was ultimately directed to ensuring monetary and financial stability, the conception of these objectives, the relationship between the two, the balance in their pursuit, and the strategies followed evolved over time reflecting changes in the monetary and financial environment as well as in the intellectual climate. In turn, the intensity of central bank cooperation was influenced by the state of international relations, the prestige and degree of autonomy of central banks and the technical nature of the issues requiring cooperation. We also argue that the BIS made a material difference, at least when conditions allowed.
Leading academics and policymakers address the theory of market discipline and consider evidence across different industries and countries. The effectiveness of market discipline -- the strong built-in incentives that encourage banks and financial systems to operate soundly and efficiently -- commands much attention today, particularly in light of recent accounting scandals. As government discipline, in the form of regulation, seems to grows less effective as the banking industry and financial markets grow more complex, the role of market discipline becomes increasingly important. In this collection, which grew out of a conference cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Ba...
Since at least the Great Financial Crisis, authorities around the world have increasingly relied on macroprudential policy to help secure financial stability and complement monetary policy as an integral element of a broader macro-financial stability framework. In today's interconnected global financial system, policy actions taken by the major advanced economies can have spillovers on the rest of the world through their impact on capital flows and exchange rates, potentially generating vulnerabilities across borders. Conversely, in emerging market economies, macroprudential policy as well as foreign exchange intervention and/or capital flow management policy can help mitigate the correspond...
This book explores the past and future of central bank cooperation. In today's global economy, the cooperation between central banks is a key element in maintaining or restoring monetary and financial stability, thereby ensuring a smooth functioning of the international financial system. Or is it? In this book, economists, historians, and political scientists look back at the experience of central bank cooperation during the past century - at its goals, nature, and processes and at its successes and failures - and draw lessons for the future. Particular attention is devoted to the role played by central bank cooperation in the formulation of minimum capital standards for internationally active banks (the Basel Capital Accord, Basel II), and in the process of European monetary unification and the introduction of the euro.
How does the management and resolution of the current crisis compare with the response of the Nordic countries in the early 1990s, widely regarded as exemplary? We argue that, while intervention has been prompter, the measures taken so far remain less comprehensive and in-depth. In particular, the cleansing of balance sheets has proceeded more slowly, and less attention has been paid to reducing excess capacity and avoiding competitive distortions. In general, policymakers have given higher priority to sustaining aggregate demand in the short term than to encouraging adjustment in the financial sector and containing moral hazard. We argue that three factors largely explain this outcome: the more international nature of the crisis; the complexity of the instruments involved; and, hardly appreciated so far, the effect of accounting practices on the dynamics of the events, reflecting in particular the prominent role of fair value accounting (and mark to market losses) in relation to amortised cost accounting for loan books. There is a risk that the policies followed so far may delay the establishment of the basis for a sustainably profitable and less risk-prone financial sector.