Banking sector problems have plagued over 130 of the IMF's member countries since 1980. Developing and industrial market economies alike have been affected, as have all the economies in transition. This volume, by Carl-Johan Lindgren, Gillian Garcia, and Matthew I. Saal, discusses the linkages between macroeconomic policy and bank soundness. It takes a global view of the causes and consequences of banking sector problems and discussses how the banking system can be strengthened, nationally and internationally.

Despite revisions to bank capital standards, fundamental shortcomings remain: the rules for setting capital requirements need to be simpler, and resolution should be an essential part of the capital requirement framework.We propose a new system of capital regulation that addresses these needs by making changes to all three pillars of bank regulation: only common equity should be recognized as capital for regulatory purposes, and risk weighting of assets should be abandoned; capital requirements should be assigned on an institution-by-institution basis according to a regulatory (s,S) approach developed in the paper; a standard for prompt, corrective action is incorporated into the (s,S) approach.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. International banking standards are intended for the regulation of large, complex, risk-taking international banks with trillions of dollars in assets and operations across the globe. Yet they are being implemented in countries with nascent financial markets and small banks that have yet to venture into international markets. Why is this? The Political Economy of Bank Regulation in Developing Countries: Risk and Reputation explores the politics of banking regulation in eleven countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It shows how financial globalization generates strong reputational and competitive incentives for developing countries to converge on international standards. Politicians, regulators, and large banks in developing countries implement international standards to attract international investment, bolster their professional standing, and further integrate their countries into global finance. Convergence is not inevitable or uniform: implementation is often contested and regulators adapt international standards to the local context. This book contributes to our understanding of the ways in which governments and firms in the core of global finance powerfully shape regulatory decisions in the periphery, and the ways that governments and firms from peripheral developing countries manoeuvre within the constraints and opportunities created by financial globalization.