The Political Economy Of Bank Regulation In Developing Countries Risk And Reputation

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 ventureinto international markets. Why is this? This book develops a new framework to explain regulatory interdependence between countries in the core and the periphery of the global financial system. Drawing on in-depth analysis of eleven countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it shows howfinancial globalisation generates strong reputational and competitive incentives for developing countries to converge on international standards. It explains how specific cross-border relations between regulators, politicians, and banks within developing countries, and international actors includinginvestors, peer regulators, and international financial institutions, generate regulatory interdependence. It explains why some configurations of domestic politics and forms of integration into global finance generate convergence with international standards, while other configurations lead todivergence. 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 andopportunities created by financial globalisation.

Drawing on in-depth analysis of 11 countries across Africa, Asia ,and Latin America, this work shows how financial globalisation is changing politics of regulation in developing countries.

The author provides a theoretical framework of the global political economy of banking regulation and analyses the policies and politics of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He demonstrates how global governance has contributed to the onset of the Great Recession and continues to increase the likelihood of future global financial crises.

It is often argued that international financial regulation has been substantially strengthened over the past decades through the international harmonization of financial regulation. There are, however, still frequent outbreaks of painful financial crises, including the recent 2008 global financial crisis. This raises doubts about the conventional claims of the strengthening of international financial regulation. This book provides an in-depth political economy study of the adoptions in Japan, Korea and Taiwan of the 1988 Basel Capital Accord, the now so-called Basel I, which has been at the center of international banking regulation over the past three decades, highlighting the domestic politics surrounding it. The book illustrates that, despite banks’ formal compliance with the Accord in these countries, their compliance was often cosmetic due to extensive regulatory forbearance that allowed their real capital soundness to weaken. Domestic politics thus ultimately determined national implementations of the Accord. This book provides its novel innovative study of the Accord through scores of interviews with bank regulators and analysis of various primary documents. It suggests that the actual effectiveness of international financial regulation relies ultimately on the domestic politics surrounding it. It implies as well that the past trend of international harmonization of financial regulation may be illusory, to at least some extent, in terms of its actual effectiveness. This book may interest not only political economists but also scholars working on the intersection of law, economics and institutions.

The book examines the operation of International Monetary Fund and World Bank conditionality in six developing countries (Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico and Tanzania) and examines its effects on their economies. It draws conclusions and policy lessons for all developing countries as regards the operation of adjustment policies. The book also examines the regulatory treatment of Third World debt, both in the US, Canada and Europe, making specific policy suggestions for increasing flexibility in debt management.

Financial crises are traditionally analyzed as purely economic phenomena. The political economy of financial booms and busts remains both under-emphasized and limited to isolated episodes. This paper examines the political economy of financial policy during ten of the most infamous financial booms and busts since the 18th century, and presents consistent evidence of pro-cyclical regulatory policies by governments. Financial booms, and risk-taking during these episodes, were often amplified by political regulatory stimuli, credit subsidies, and an increasing light-touch approach to financial supervision. The regulatory backlash that ensues from financial crises can only be understood in the context of the deep political ramifications of these crises. Post-crisis regulations do not always survive the following boom. The interplay between politics and financial policy over these cycles deserves further attention. History suggests that politics can be the undoing of macro-prudential regulations.

Examines the law and policy of financial regulation using a combination of conceptual analysis and strong empirical research.

Central banks can shape economic growth, affect income distribution, influence a country's foreign relations, and determine the extent of its democracy. While there is considerable literature on the political economy of central banking in OECD countries, this is the first book-length study focused on central banking in emerging market countries. Surveying the dramatic worldwide trend toward increased central bank independence in the 1990s, the book argues that global forces must be at work. These forces, the book contends, center on the character of international financial intermediation. Going beyond an explanation of central bank independence, Sylvia Maxfield posits a general framework for analyzing the impact of different types of international capital flows on the politics of economic policymaking in developing countries. The book suggests that central bank independence in emerging market countries does not spring from law but rather from politics. As long as politicians value them, central banks will enjoy independence. Central banks are most likely to be independent in developing countries when politicians desire international creditworthiness. Historical analyses of central banks in Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Thailand, and quantitative analyses of a larger sample of developing countries corroborate this investor signaling explanation of broad trends in central bank status.