Staff Discussion Notes showcase the latest policy-related analysis and research being developed by individual IMF staff and are published to elicit comment and to further debate. These papers are generally brief and written in nontechnical language, and so are aimed at a broad audience interested in economic policy issues. This Web-only series replaced Staff Position Notes in January 2011.

In The Economics of Inaction, leading economist Nancy Stokey shows how the tools of stochastic control can be applied to dynamic problems of decision making under uncertainty when fixed costs are present. Stokey provides a self-contained, rigorous, and clear treatment of two types of models, impulse and instantaneous control. She presents the relevant results about Brownian motion and other diffusion processes, develops methods for analyzing each type of problem, and discusses applications to price setting, investment, and durable goods purchases."--Pub. desc.

An IMF paper reviewing the policy responses of Indonesia, Korea and Thailand to the 1997 Asian crisis, comparing the actions of these three countries with those of Malaysia and the Philippines. Although all judgements are still tentative, important lessons can be learned from the experiences of the last two years.

The seeming failure of loose monetary policy to reactivate Japan’s economy has led some observers to suggest that the usual credit channels through which monetary policy affects the real economy are blocked, and this because of a pervasive shortage of bank capital that has induced a leftward shift in the supply of bank credit: the so called credit crunch hypothesis. This paper finds support for the hypothesis in the 1997 bank data—a year during which the landscape of the Japanese financial system was changed fundamentally—but finds no, or even contrary, evidence, for most of the 1990’s.

We identify current challenges for creating stable, yet efficient financial systems using lessons from recent and past crises. Reforms need to start from three tenets: adopting a system-wide perspective explicitly aimed at addressing market failures; understanding and incorporating into regulations agents’ incentives so as to align them better with societies’ goals; and acknowledging that risks of crises will always remain, in part due to (unknown) unknowns – be they tipping points, fault lines, or spillovers. Corresponding to these three tenets, specific areas for further reforms are identified. Policy makers need to resist, however, fine-tuning regulations: a “do not harm” approach is often preferable. And as risks will remain, crisis management needs to be made an integral part of system design, not relegated to improvisation after the fact.

Since banking systems play a crucial role in maintaining the overall health of the economy, the adverse effects of poorly supervised systems may be quite severe. Without some form of vigilant external oversight, banking systems could fall prey to excessive risk taking, moral hazard, and corruption. Prudential supervision provides that oversight, using government regulation and monitoring to ensure the soundness of the banking system and, by extension, the economy at large. The contributors to this thoughtful volume examine the current state of prudential supervision, focusing on fundamental issues and key pragmatic concerns. Why is prudential supervision so important? What kinds of excess must it guard against? What particular forms does it take? Which of these are the most effective deterrents against mismanagement and system overload in today's rapidly shifting financial climate? The contributors foresee a continued movement beyond simple regulatory rules in banking and toward a more active evaluation and supervision of a bank's risk management practices.

This paper reviews the literature on financial crises focusing on three specific aspects. First, what are the main factors explaining financial crises? Since many theories on the sources of financial crises highlight the importance of sharp fluctuations in asset and credit markets, the paper briefly reviews theoretical and empirical studies on developments in these markets around financial crises. Second, what are the major types of financial crises? The paper focuses on the main theoretical and empirical explanations of four types of financial crises—currency crises, sudden stops, debt crises, and banking crises—and presents a survey of the literature that attempts to identify these episodes. Third, what are the real and financial sector implications of crises? The paper briefly reviews the short- and medium-run implications of crises for the real economy and financial sector. It concludes with a summary of the main lessons from the literature and future research directions.

The effect of bank capital on lending is a critical determinant of the linkage between financial conditions and real activity, and has received especial attention in the recent financial crisis. The authors use panel-regression techniques to study the lending of large bank holding companies (BHCs) and find small effects of capital on lending. They then consider the effect of capital ratios on lending using a variant of Lown and Morgan's VAR model, and again find modest effects of bank capital ratio changes on lending. The authors¿ estimated models are then used to understand recent developments in bank lending and, in particular, to consider the role of TARP-related capital injections in affecting these developments. Illus. A print on demand pub.