2012年2月8日星期三

Bank Regulation and Supervision 1-What and Why

Every month I get my bank statement. Every month I go to bank to deal with some affairs of my account at average three times. Understandably, bank is an essential part of human life nowadays.

When I read some materials related to the topic that I interested in, I find, in some researchers’ opinion, bank is so vital that it matter for human’s welfare and accounts for economic growth.[1]

In our lecture notes-topic four, bank regulation and supervision is defined as a government intervention. It requires banks to act in certain principles, disciplines and even laws.

For some investment activities, they have more risk but more profits. So some banks may tend to engage in this kind of investments. For example, invest in real estate or issue great loans to those firms and individuals, which are not well operated or do not have good creditor. Hope we all remembered the banking crisis not long ago. Some evidences show that in developing countries, the cost of banking crises has exceeded 1 trillion Dollars since 1980. [2]This maybe one of the reasons why bank regulation and supervision is worth discussing.

Another reason may be some banks will come together to be a syndicate if without some restrictions. They will monopoly the market, which do harm to the competition and efficiency. More seriously, if they collude with some political parties, they will be too powerful to control. It will cause a disaster not only for people but also for banks.




[1] R. Levine, "Finance and Growth: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Paper No. 10766, September 2004, and Handbook of Economic Growth, Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf eds., forthcoming.
[2] J. Barth, G. Caprio, and R. Levine, Rethinking Bank Regulation: Till Angels Govern, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

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