Mobile banking is growing at a remarkable speed around the world. In the process it is creating considerable uncertainty about the appropriate regulatory response to this newly emerging service. This paper sets out a framework for considering the design of regulation of mobile banking. Since it lies at the interface between financial services and telecoms, mobile banking also raises competition policy and interoperability issues that are discussed in the paper. Finally, by unbundling payments services into its component parts, mobile banking provides important lessons for the design of financial regulation more generally in developed as well as developing economies.

This paper examines time-series and cross-country variations in default risk co-dependence in the global banking system. The authors construct a default risk measure for all publicly traded banks using the Merton contingent claim model, and examine the evolution of the correlation structure of default risk for more than 1,800 banks in more than 60 countries. They find that there has been a significant increase in default risk co-dependence over the three-year period leading to the financial crisis. They also find that countries that are more integrated, and that have liberalized financial systems and weak banking supervision, have higher co-dependence in their banking sector. The results support an increase in scope for international supervisory co-operation, as well as capital charges for "too-connected-to-fail" institutions that can impose significant externalities.

The main objective of this paper is to rethink the use of market discipline for prudential purposes in light of lessons from the financial crisis. The paper develops the main building blocks of a market discipline framework, and argues for the need to take an expansive view of the concept. It also illustrates using actual bank case studies from the United States its apparent failures in the crisis, particularly the failure to prevent the buildup of systemic, as opposed to idiosyncratic, risks. However, while the role of market discipline in the design of macro-prudential regulation appears to be largely constrained, more can be done on the micro-prudential side to promote clearer market signals of bank riskiness and to encourage their use in the supervisory process.

This paper presents new data from 150 countries showing that former cabinet members, central bank governors, and financial regulators are many orders of magnitude more likely than other citizens to become board members of banks. Countries where the politician-banker phenomenon is more prevalent have higher corruption and more powerful yet less accountable governments, but not better functioning financial systems. Regulation becomes more pro-banker where this happens more often. Furthermore, a higher fraction of the rents that are created accrue to bankers, former politicians are not more likely to be directors when their side is in power, and banks are more profitable without being more leveraged. Rather than supporting a public interest view, the evidence is consistent with a capture-type private interest story where, in exchange for a non-executive position at a bank in the future, politicians provide for beneficial regulation.

This paper reassesses what works in banking regulation based on the new World Bank survey (Survey IV) of bank regulation and supervision around world. The paper briefly presents new and official survey information on bank regulations in more than 125 countries, makes comparisons with earlier surveys since 1999, and assesses the relationship between changes in bank regulations and banking system performance. The data suggest that many countries made capital regulations more stringent and granted greater discretionary power to official supervisory agencies over the past 12 years, but most countries have not enhanced the ability and incentives of private investors to monitor banks rigorously -- and several have weakened such private monitoring incentives. Although it is difficult to draw causal inferences from these data, and while there are material cross-country differences in the evolution of regulatory reforms, existing evidence suggests that many countries are making counterproductive changes to their bank regulations by not enhancing the ability and incentives of private investors to scrutinize banks.

This article reviews the main issues of regulating and supervising banks in emerging markets with a view toward evaluating the long-run options. Particular attention is paid to Latin America and East Asia. These economies face a severe policy commitment problem that leads to excessive bailouts and potential devaluation of claims of foreign investors. This exacerbates moral hazard and makes a case for importing external discipline (for example, acquiring foreign short-term debt). However, external discipline may come at the cost of excessive liquidation of entrepreneurial projects. The article reviews the tradeoffs imposed by external discipline and examines various arrangements, such as narrow banking, foreign banks and foreign regulation, and the potential role for an international agency or international lender of last resort.

Mobile banking services offer great potential to expand financial services, particularly payment services, to the poor. They also provide a convenient and cost effective way to access bank accounts. This paper constitutes a first attempt to explain statistically what factors contribute to mobile banking usage, with a particular focus on the regulatory framework. The authors construct an index that measures the existence of laws and regulation that support mobile banking activity for 35 countries. Using variations in regulatory environments across these countries and armed with newly released data on mobile banking usage by approximately 37,000 individuals in these 35 countries, the paper sheds light on the importance of laws and regulation in supporting mobile banking. The analysis finds that a supporting regulatory framework is associated with higher usage of mobile banking for the general population as well as for the unbanked.

This assessment of the current state of the implementation of the Basel core principles for effective banking supervision (BCP) in the Republic of Korea has been completed as part of a financial sector assessment program (FSAP) update undertaken by the international monetary fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) during 2013. It reflects the regulatory and supervisory framework in place as of the date of the completion of the assessment. An assessment of the effectiveness of banking supervision requires a review of the legal framework, and detailed examination of the policies and practices of the institution(s) responsible for banking regulation and supervision. In line with the BCP methodology, the assessment focused on the financial services commission - financial supervisory authority (FSC-FSS). This FSAP provides introduction; information and methodology used for assessment; institutional and macroeconomic setting and market structure - overview; preconditions for effective banking supervision; summary compliance with the Basel core principles; and detailed assessment.

Although there is an increasing research interest in banking capital requirements, the impact of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) banking regulation on Chinese commercial banks’ behaviors has not been fully explored. Even though CBRC banking regulation has tremendously improved the capital adequacy ratio, on average, for Chinese commercial banks in recent years, the question of whether and how different types of banks in China have reacted to constraints placed by the regulator on their capital has not been empirically tested in the literature for Chinese cases. This overarching research problem, which forms the foundation of this doctoral research project, gives rise to three important research questions. First, do different types of banks in China react differently to capital requirements in terms of capital adequacy level, i.e. do state-owned banks, joint-equity banks, local banks, and foreign banks behave the same in their capital ratio when adhering to changes in capital requirements? Second, do Chinese banks differ in their ability to adjust risk, i.e. do different types of banks simultaneously adjust their capital and risk due to the influence of binding capital requirements? Third, do corporate governance factors jointly work with banking regulation in explaining Chinese banks’ risk behaviors...

The financial market events in 2007–9 have spurred renewed interest and controversy in debates regarding financial regulation and supervision. This dissertation takes stock of the developments in EU legislation, case-law and institutional structures with regards to banking regulation and supervision, which preceded and followed the recent financial crisis. It does not merely provide an update, but anchors these developments in the broader EU law context, challenging past paradigms and anticipating possible developments. The author provides a systematic analysis of the interactions between the content of prudential rules and the mechanisms behind their production and application. European Prudential Banking Regulation and Supervision includes discussions of the European banking market structure and of regulatory theory that both aim to circumscribe prudential concerns. It scrutinises the content of prudential norms, proposes a qualification of these norms and an assessment of their interaction with other types of norms (corporate, auditing and accounting, consumer protection, competition rules). It also features an analysis of the underpinning institutional set-up and its envisaged reforms, focusing on the typical EU concerns related to checks and balances. Finally...

The financial market events in 2007–9 have spurred renewed interest and controversy in debates regarding financial regulation and supervision. This book takes stock of the developments in EU legislation, case-law and institutional structures with regards to banking regulation and supervision, which preceded and followed the recent financial crisis. It does not merely provide an update, but anchors these developments in the broader EU law context, challenging past paradigms and anticipating possible developments. The author provides a systematic analysis of the interactions between the content of prudential rules and the mechanisms behind their production and application. European Prudential Banking Regulation and Supervision includes discussions of the European banking market structure and of regulatory theory that both aim to circumscribe prudential concerns. It scrutinises the content of prudential norms, proposes a qualification of these norms and an assessment of their interaction with other types of norms (corporate, auditing and accounting, consumer protection, competition rules). It also features an analysis of the underpinning institutional set-up and its envisaged reforms, focusing on the typical EU concerns related to checks and balances. Finally...

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is to be commended for its tightly controlled regulatory and supervisory regime, consisting of higher than minimum capital requirements, frequent, hands-on and comprehensive onsite inspections, a conservative liquidity risk policy and restrictions on banks' capacity to take on more volatile exposures. The Indian banking system remained largely stable during the global financial crisis. Since then, the government of India and RBI has taken additional measures to enhance the soundness and resilience of the banking system, such as the establishment of a Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC), the implementation of a countercyclical provisioning regime, and the development of a roadmap for the introduction of a holding company structure.

Cross-border banking has been a critical part of Africa's financial history since colonial times. While the period after independence saw a wave of nationalization across the continent, with many of the colonial banks exiting, this trend was reversed in the 1980s with the arrival of financial liberalization. Failing state-owned and private banks were sold mostly to global investors or multinational banks. Increasing international and regional economic integration, including of financial services, and deregulation further increased the number of foreign banks and by the mid-2000s many African banking systems were yet again dominated by foreign banks. This introductory chapter documents trends in cross-border banking in Africa and the increasing shift in the composition of foreign banks in Africa. The next section provides a short overview of financial systems in Africa to set the stage. Section two characterizes the population of cross-border banks operating in Africa today, their expansion across the continent...

A large body of evidence points to misaligned incentives as having a key role in the run-up to the global financial crisis. These include bank managers' incentives to boost short-term profits and create banks that are "too big to fail," regulators' incentives to forebear and withhold information from other regulators in stressful times, and credit rating agencies' incentives to keep issuing high ratings for subprime assets. As part of the response to the crisis, policymakers and regulators also attempted to address some incentive issues, but various outside observers have criticized the response for being insufficient. This paper proposes a pragmatic approach to re-orienting financial regulation to have at its core the objective of addressing incentives on an ongoing basis. Specifically, the paper proposes "incentive audits" as a tool that could help in identifying incentive misalignments in the financial sector. The paper illustrates how such audits could be implemented in practice, and what the implications would be for the design of policies and frameworks to mitigate systemic risks.

The global financial crisis has uncovered a number of weaknesses in the supervision and regulation of cross border banks. One such weakness was the lack of effective cooperation among banking supervisors. Since then, international bodies, such as the G-20, the Financial Stability Board and the Basel Committee have actively promoted the use of supervisory colleges. The objective of this paper is to explore the obstacles to effective cross border supervisory information sharing. More specifically, a schematic presentation illustrating the misalignments in incentives for information sharing between home and host supervisors under the current supervisory task-sharing anchored in the Basel Concordat is developed. This paper finds that in the absence of an ex ante agreed upon resolution and burden-sharing mechanism and deteriorating health of the bank, incentive conflicts escalate and supervisory cooperation breaks down. The promotion of good practices for cooperation in supervisory colleges is thus not sufficient to address the existing incentive conflicts. What is needed is a rigorous analysis and review of the supervisory task-sharing framework...

This paper studies whether compliance with the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCP) improves bank soundness. BCP compliance assessments provide a unique source of information about the quality of bank supervision and regulation around the world. The authors find a significant and positive relationship between bank soundness (measured with Moody's financial strength ratings) and compliance with principles related to information provision. Specifically, countries that require banks to report regularly and accurately their financial data to regulators and market participants have sounder banks. This relationship is robust to controlling for broad indexes of institutional quality, macroeconomic variables, sovereign ratings, as well as reverse causality. Measuring soundness through z-scores yields similar results. The findings emphasize the importance of transparency in making supervisory processes effective and strengthening market discipline. Countries aiming to upgrade banking regulation and supervision should consider giving priority to information provision over other elements of the Core Principles.

This is not the first international banking crisis the world has seen. The previous ones occurred without credit default swaps, special investment vehicles, or even credit ratings. If crises keep repeating themselves, it seems reasonable to argue that policy makers need to carefully consider what they are doing and not just 'double up' by superficially reacting to the specific features of today's crisis. While we cannot to prevent crises, we can perhaps make them fewer and milder by adopting and implementing better regulation in particular, more macro-prudential regulation.

This thesis evaluates how regulation on capital requirements is associated with cost and profit efficiency of banks. It allows an international comparison on banking regulation, capturing changes on public policies towards banks over time further, it encompasses one of the major financial crises since 1929. The impact of regulatory capital requirements on banking efficiency is assessed using the stochastic frontier production function for panel data to estimate inefficiency effects. It is used a panel dataset of 865 observations from 156 publicly listed commercial banks operating in 30 countries and covering a nine year time-horizon (2004-2012). Besides the impact on capital regulation, we also controlled for the influence of other regulatory variables, macroeconomic conditions, market structure characteristics and the state of financial development. Our results suggest that capital requirements negatively affect inefficiency, meaning that, for our sample, an increase on regulatory equity ratios will lead to an efficiency improvement. Regarding other regulatory control variables, we would say that regulation should aim to increase market discipline, while restricting banks activities. The power of supervisory agencies seems to negatively impact banks’ efficiency...

The globalisation of banking markets has raised important issues regarding corporate governance regulation for banking institutions. This research paper addresses some of the major issues of corporate governance as it relates to banking regulation. The traditional principal-agent framework will be used to analyse some of the major issues involving corporate governance and banking institutions. It begins by analysing the emerging international regime of bank corporate governance. This has been set forth in Pillar II of the amended Basel Capital Accord. Pillar II provides a detailed framework for how bank supervisors and bank management should interact with respect to the management of banking institutions and the impact this may have on financial stability. The paper will then analyse corporate governance and banking regulation in the United Kingdom and United States. Although UK corporate governance regulation has traditionally not focused on the special role of banks and financial institutions, the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 has sought to fill this gap by authorizing the FSA to devise rules and regulations to enhance corporate governance for financial firms. In the US, corporate governance for banking institutions is regulated by federal and state statute and regulation. Federal regulation provides a prescriptive framework for directors and senior management in exercising their management responsibilities. US banking regulation also addresses governance problems in bank and financial holding companies. For reasons of financial stability...

This dissertation contrasts the development of the regulatory structure of the American and German banking systems until the mid-20th century. It explains why the countries' regulatory structures diverged into diametrically opposite directions, even though both countries had federal political systems and regularly observed the developments in the other country. Furthermore, after the Second World War, the American military government was even able to mold the German banking system into an idealized version of the American one. The thesis also provides an explanation why this assimilation attempt ultimately failed, and why there was a strong institutional persistency between Nazi Germany and West Germany instead. The original contributions to knowledge are the following: (1) This thesis offers a novel perspective on the evolution of the structure of American banking regulation by interpreting it as being largely driven by constitutional conflict (2) it shows that prior to the Banking Crisis of 1931 there was no intention to introduce a comprehensive regulatory structure for the banking sector in Germany (3) It provides a reassessment of the origins of the German Credit Act of 1961 as a non-deterministic process (4) It interprets German banking regulation after the Second World War as a failed Institutional Assimilation...