Activities of international banks are at the core of discussions on the causes and effects of the global financial crisis. The International Banking Research Network (IBRN), established in 2012, brings together researchers from around the world with access to microdata on individual banks to investigate key issues. This paper summarizes the common methodology and results of case studies conducted in 11 countries to analyze the impact of liquidity shocks on bank lending, both domestic and foreign. Four main insights are established. First, liquidity conditions affecting parent banks transmit into both the domestic and foreign lending of these banks. Second, the ex ante balance sheet composition of banks and banks’ business models influence their responses to liquidity risk. No single balance sheet characteristic consistently plays a role in liquidity risk transmission. Third, internal liquidity management within multinational banks can alter the domestic lending effects of liquidity risk. Fourth, the availability of official sector liquidity tends to reduce the adverse consequences of private liquidity conditions for bank lending during stress periods and to weaken the impact of bank balance sheet constraints.

This study provides findings on the transmission of liquidity shocks by Austrian parent banks through the lending channel. The paper investigates how different types of banks adjust their balance sheet positions in response to a liquidity shock. It distinguishes between different definitions of lending activities, such as changes in domestic C&I lending, foreign C&I lending, total credit, cross-border claims, foreign offices local claims, and internal borrowing between affiliated banks. The paper finds that (1) smaller banks (parent banks without affiliates) response to liquidity risk depends on core deposit funding for foreign C&I lending and total credit. (2) Cross-sectional differences in large banks (parent banks with affiliates) in response to liquidity risk cannot be uniformly explained by one particular ex ante determinant. The growth of cross-border claims is negatively correlated with a higher share of illiquid assets and with a higher share of capital, and positively correlated with the commitment ratio. Use of official sector liquidity provided by the Austrian government reduces the importance of the commitments share as a driver of cross-sectional differences in lending by Austrian global banks in response to market liquidity risks.

Minimum equity ratio requirements promote bank stability, but compliance must be measured credibly and requirements must be commensurate with risk. A mix of higher book equity requirements, a carefully designed contingent capital requirement, cash reserve requirements, and other measures, would address prudential objectives better than book equity requirements alone. Basel III’s ill-defined liquidity ratios, book capital ratios, and internal models of risk must be replaced by a system of credible, incentive-robust rules that combine valid concepts with objective, market-based information into a simplified and credible regulatory process. Raising minimum capital requirements will not be socially costless; bank profitability, share prices, and loan supply are likely to suffer. But avoiding the dramatic consequences of banking crises would more than repay those costs.

By November 2013, more than five years had elapsed since the world economy experienced its deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Yet, the return to normalcy was nowhere in sight. Although growth gradually picked up in the United States, labor markets remained fragile. In the euro area, low inflation and anemic growth threatened the fiscal consolidation efforts of many countries. Japan embarked on a bold quantitative easing program to jumpstart its economy but had setbacks. Many emerging market economies experienced slowdowns while showing extreme nervousness at the prospect of an end to the period of massive liquidity injections by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

This paper analyzes the fiscal and monetary policy responses to crises in Latin America over the last 40 years. We argue that, on average, Latin American countries have “graduated” in terms of their policy responses in the sense that they have been able to switch from procyclical to counteryclical policy responses. This average response, however, masks a great deal of heterogeneity with some countries (such as Chile, Brazil, and Mexico) leading the graduation process and others (like Argentina and Venezuela) still showing procyclical policy responses. We further argue that countercyclical policy responses have been effective in reducing the duration and intensity of crises. Finally, we relate our analysis to the current crisis in the Eurozone and argue that, like in many instances in Latin America, procyclical fiscal policy has aggravated the duration and intensity of the crisis.

Although the direct effect of lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) facilities is to forestall the default of financial firms that lose funding liquidity, an indirect effect is to allow these firms to minimize deleveraging sales of illiquid assets. This unintended consequence of LOLR facilities manifests itself as excess illiquid leverage in the financial sector, can make future liquidity shortfalls more likely, and can lead to an increase in default risks. Furthermore, this increase in default risk can occur despite the fact that the combination of LOLR facilities and reduced asset sales raises the prices of illiquid assets. The behavior of U.S. broker-dealers during the crisis of 2007–09 is consistent with this unintended consequence. In particular, given the Federal Reserve’s LOLR facilities, broker-dealers could afford to try to wait out the crisis. Although they did reduce traditional measures of leverage to varying degrees, they failed to reduce sufficiently their illiquid leverage, which contributed to their failures or near failures. Several mechanisms to address this unintended consequence of LOLR facilities are proposed.

This paper analyzes the impact of relaxing fertility controls and expanding social security in China. We develop an overlapping generations model in which fertility decisions and capital accumulation are endogenously determined in the presence of social security. In our model, children are an alternative savings technology—as they transfer resources to their retired parents. Important feedback links arise between fertility and social security variables: an expansion of social security benefits reduces fertility—partially offsetting the effects of relaxing the one-child policy. The feedback loop between social security variables and fertility suggests that abandoning fertility restrictions may not be as effective in helping to finance China’s intended pension reform, especially if children are an important source of old-age support. The sustainability of the pension system is particularly at risk in the event of a growth slowdown. The objective of pension reforms may also be incongruent with other reforms, such as financial liberalization and financial integration.

This paper investigates the relation between growth forecast errors and planned fiscal consolidation during the crisis. We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected, with the relation being particularly strong, both statistically and economically, early in the crisis. A natural interpretation is that fiscal multipliers were substantially higher than implicitly assumed by forecasters. The weaker relation in more recent years may reflect in part learning by forecasters and in part smaller multipliers than in the early years of the crisis.