Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,5, Utrecht University (Utrecht School of Economics), language: English, abstract: Financial liberalization stimulates competition and thereby supposedly increases the efficiency of investment. A simple credit market model is developed to show that such efficiency improvements may be disturbed by competition-induced incentives for banks to accept higher default rates, which result in instability of the financial system. Thereby we offer a complementary explanation to the relationship between competition and stability in financial markets. Consequently we argue that government intervention, in the form of intelligent regulation, is necessary to ensure the development of sustainable financial markets.

The global financial system has proven increasingly unstable and crisis-prone since the early 1980s. The system has failed to serve either creditors or debtors well. This has been reinforced by the global financial crisis of 2008, where we have seen systemic weaknesses bring rich countries to the brink of bankruptcy and visit appalling suffering on the poorest citizens of poor countries. Yet the regulatory responses to this crisis have involved little thinking from outside the box in which the crisis was delivered to the world. This book presents a powerful indictment of this regulatory failure and calls for greatly increased attention to international financial law and analyses new regulatory measures with the potential to make a new recognition of the principles that ought to underlie it. Using a historical approach that compares the various financial crises of the past three decades, the authors clearly show how misconceived economic policy responses have paved the way for each next 'crash'. Among the numerous topics that arise in the course of this revealing analysis are the following: overvalued exchange rates; excess liquidity in rich countries; premature liberalisation of local financial markets; capital controls; derivatives markets; accounting standards; credit ratings and the conflicts in the role of credit rating agencies; investor protection arrangements; insurance companies; and payment, clearing and settlement activities. The authors offer detailed commentary on: the role of multilateral development banks, the IMF and the WTO in responding to crises; the role of the Basel Accords, the Financial Stability Forum and Board, and the responses of the European Commission, the US, and the G20 to the most recent crisis. The book concludes by exploring systemic game-changing reforms such as bank levies, financial activities taxes and financial transaction taxes, and a global sovereign bankruptcy regime; as well as measures to remove the currency mismatches from the balance sheets of developing countries. Apart from its great usefulness as a detailed introduction to the international financial system and its regulation, the book is enormously valuable for its clear identification of the areas of regulatory failure, and its analysis of new regulatory approaches that offer the potential for a genuinely more stable system. Banking and investment policymakers at every level, the lawyers that serve these markets and the regulators that seek to regulate them, cannot afford to neglect this book.

Analysis and evidence of how the factors that give rise to boom-bust cycles in fast-growing developing economies also enhance long-run growth. The volatility that has hit many middle-income countries (MICs) after liberalizing their financial markets has prompted critics to call for new policies to stabilize these boom-bust cycles. But, as Aaron Tornell and Frank Westermann point out in this book, over the last two decades most of the developing countries that have experienced lending booms and busts have also exhibited the fastest growth among MICs. Countries with more stable credit growth, by contrast, have exhibited, on average, lower growth rates. Factors that contribute to financial fragility thus appear, paradoxically, to be a source of long-run growth as well. Tornell and Westermann analyze boom-bust cycles in the developing world and discuss how these cycles are generated by credit market imperfections. They explain why the financial liberalization that allows countries to overcome imperfections impeding rapid growth also generates the financial fragility that leads to greater volatility and occasional crises. The conceptual framework they present illustrates this linkage and allows Tornell and Westermann to address normative questions regarding liberalization policies.The authors also characterize key macroeconomic regularities observed across MICs, showing that credit markets play a key role not only in boom-bust episodes but in the strong "credit channel" observed during tranquil times. A theoretical framework is then presented that explains how credit market imperfections can account for these empirical patterns. Finally, Tornell and Westermann provide microeconomic evidence on the credit market imperfections that drive the results of the theoretical framework, finding that asymmetries between tradables and nontradables are key to understanding the patterns in MIC data.

This paper reviews the literature on financial crises focusing on three specific aspects. First, what are the main factors explaining financial crises? Since many theories on the sources of financial crises highlight the importance of sharp fluctuations in asset and credit markets, the paper briefly reviews theoretical and empirical studies on developments in these markets around financial crises. Second, what are the major types of financial crises? The paper focuses on the main theoretical and empirical explanations of four types of financial crises—currency crises, sudden stops, debt crises, and banking crises—and presents a survey of the literature that attempts to identify these episodes. Third, what are the real and financial sector implications of crises? The paper briefly reviews the short- and medium-run implications of crises for the real economy and financial sector. It concludes with a summary of the main lessons from the literature and future research directions.

Abstract: The first part of this paper reviews the literature on the relation between finance and growth. The second part of the paper reviews the literature on the historical and policy determinants of financial development. Governments play a central role in shaping the operation of financial systems and the degree to which large segments of the financial system have access to financial services. The paper discusses the relationship between financial sector policies and economic development.

This paper analyses the links between capital account liberalisation and other policies influencing financial sector stability. Drawing on country experiences, it develops an operational framework for the co-ordination of capital account liberalisation, particularly with structural policies to strengthen the domestic financial system.