Global Crisis, Regulatory Reform and International Policy Coordination

Abstract

The recent global crisis has brought the following issues to the forefront of macro-policy analysis: (a) procyclicality of bank capital regulation, (b) role of asset bubbles, (c) high social costs of financial failures and (d) high leverage of financial institutions (FIs). It has been realized by the global community that tackling these problems calls for a coordinated approach in which the following agencies will have to play a vital role: National regulatory and supervisory (R&S) authorities International Monetary Fund (IMF) Financial Stability Forum (FSF) International standard setting bodies—Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), etc. Influential groups like G-20 For purposes of this article, we focus on the role of national R&S authorities and find that this role revolves around seven key policy areas, namely (a) making monetary policy respond to asset prices, (b) strengthening and expanding the scope of regulation and supervision, (c) controlling leverage of FIs, (d) dampening procyclicality of capital requirements, (e) reducing costs of financial failures, (f) devising market incentives for prudent behaviour and (g) a shift from micro-prudential to macro-prudential regulation. We examine to what extent the official financial supervisory and regulatory authorities in India have fulfilled this role successfully. JEL Classification: E6, F4, F5