Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T04:00:30.550Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - How Are Banks Regulated and Supervised Around the World?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

James R. Barth
Affiliation:
Auburn University, Alabama
Gerard Caprio
Affiliation:
Williams College, Massachusetts
Ross Levine
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Get access

Summary

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the state of science…. If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.

William Thompson, Lord Kelvin

OVERVIEW

How do countries regulate and supervise their banks? Until recently, there was no comprehensive and official database on which one could draw to assess (1) the extent to which bank regulatory and supervisory regimes differ across a wide spectrum of countries, (2) what works best with regard to bank supervision and regulation, and (3) the determinants of different bank supervisory and regulatory choices around the world. Moreover, regulatory officials, especially those from high-income countries, have often taken the view that their choice of how to regulate and supervise their own banks was best for banks everywhere. This “policy hubris” is aided and abetted by a lack of a sufficiently comprehensive and detailed database with which to compare the practices of individual countries. Most importantly, the absence of such data prevents one from empirically testing any advice as to what a country should do to improve bank regulation and supervision and from assessing why countries adopt particular policies toward banks.

Type
Chapter
Information
Rethinking Bank Regulation
Till Angels Govern
, pp. 75 - 177
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×