This volume presents a new database on bank regulation in over 150 countries. It offers a comprehensive cross-country assessment of the impact of bank regulation on the operation of banks and assesses the validity of the Basel Committee's influential approach to bank regulation.

An “intriguing plan” addressing shadow banking, regulation, and the continuing quest for financial stability (Financial Times). Years have passed since the world experienced one of the worst financial crises in history, and while countless experts have analyzed it, many central questions remain unanswered. Should money creation be considered a “public” or “private” activity—or both? What do we mean by, and want from, financial stability? What role should regulation play? How would we design our monetary institutions if we could start from scratch? In The Money Problem, Morgan Ricks addresses these questions and more, offering a practical yet elegant blueprint for a modernized system of money and banking—one that, crucially, can be accomplished through incremental changes to the United States’ current system. He brings a critical, missing dimension to the ongoing debates over financial stability policy, arguing that the issue is primarily one of monetary system design. The Money Problem offers a way to mitigate the risk of catastrophic panic in the future, and it will expand the financial reform conversation in the United States and abroad. “Highly recommended.” —Choice

How the unaccountable, unmonitorable, and unchecked actions of regulators precipitated the global financial crisis; and how to reform the system. The recent financial crisis was an accident, a “perfect storm” fueled by an unforeseeable confluence of events that unfortunately combined to bring down the global financial systems. Or at least this is the story told and retold by a chorus of luminaries that includes Timothy Geithner, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, Ben Bernanke, and Alan Greenspan. In Guardians of Finance, economists James Barth, Gerard Caprio, and Ross Levine argue that the financial meltdown of 2007 to 2009 was no accident; it was negligent homicide. They show that senior regulatory officials around the world knew or should have known that their policies were destabilizing the global financial system and yet chose not to act until the crisis had fully emerged. Barth, Caprio, and Levine propose a reform to counter this systemic failure: the establishment of a “Sentinel” to provide an informed, expert, and independent assessment of financial regulation. Its sole power would be to demand information and to evaluate it from the perspective of the public—rather than that of the financial industry, the regulators, or politicians.

Taking stock of the 2008 global financial crisis, this book provides 'outside the box' solutions for reforming international financial regulation.

Three dominant forces worldwide are driving change today in our financial markets: competition, technology and regulation. But their collective impact in reshaping the markets, though they may be viewed individually as desirable or well-intentioned, is producing challenging results that are difficult to predict, hard to control and not easy to understand. Extreme market turbulence has underlined the key issues as much attention turns to the appropriate regulatory response. That is the backdrop for this thought-provoking book, emerging from a Baruch College Conference on equity market structure in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, and featuring contributions from an acclaimed panel of international scholars, policymakers, regulators, and industry leaders. The result presents emerging perspective and ideas that illuminate the dynamics of financial regulation today and into the future. The Zicklin School of Business Financial Markets Series presents the insights emerging from a sequence of conferences hosted by the Zicklin School at Baruch College for industry professionals, regulators, and scholars. Much more than historical documents, the transcripts from the conferences are edited for clarity, perspective and context; material and comments from subsequent interviews with the panelists and speakers are integrated for a complete thematic presentation. Each book is focused on a well delineated topic, but all deliver broader insights into the quality and efficiency of the U.S. equity markets and the dynamic forces changing them.