Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures, Tables, and Appendices
- Preface
- Rethinking Bank Regulation
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Contrasting Approaches to Bank Regulation
- 3 How Are Banks Regulated and Supervised Around the World?
- 4 What Works Best?
- 5 Choosing Bank Regulations
- 6 Rethinking Bank Regulation
- Appendices
- References
- Index
3 - How Are Banks Regulated and Supervised Around the World?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures, Tables, and Appendices
- Preface
- Rethinking Bank Regulation
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Contrasting Approaches to Bank Regulation
- 3 How Are Banks Regulated and Supervised Around the World?
- 4 What Works Best?
- 5 Choosing Bank Regulations
- 6 Rethinking Bank Regulation
- Appendices
- References
- Index
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 KelvinOVERVIEW
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 RegulationTill Angels Govern, pp. 75 - 177Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005