It is high time we rediscovered the role of the financial cycle in macroeconomics. In the environment that has prevailed for at least three decades now, it is not possible to understand business fluctuations and the corresponding analytical and policy challenges without understanding the financial cycle. This calls for a rethink of modelling strategies and for significant adjustments to macroeconomic policies. This essay highlights the stylised empirical features of the financial cycle, conjectures as to what it may take to model it satisfactorily, and considers its policy implications. In the discussion of policy, the essay pays special attention to the bust phase, which is less well explored and raises much more controversial issues.

We argue that changes in the monetary and financial regimes over the last twenty years or so have been subtly altering the dynamics of the economy and hence the challenges that monetary and prudential authorities face. In particular, the current environment may be more vulnerable to the occasional build up of financial imbalances, i.e. over-extensions in (private sector) balance sheets, which herald economic weakness and unwelcome disinflation down the road, as they unwind. As a result, achieving simultaneous monetary and financial stability in a lasting way may call for refinements to current monetary and prudential policy frameworks. These refinements would entail a firmer long-term focus, greater symmetry in policy responses between upswings and downswings, with greater attention to actions during upswings, and closer coordination between monetary and prudential authorities.

Recent initiatives to improve the public information about individual firms have brought to the fore significant differences in perspective between accountants and prudential regulators. We examine the reasons for these differences and propose ways in which they could be reconciled within a broader framework aimed at identifying the type of information conducive to the proper functioning and stability of the financial system. We argue that such information should concern three characteristics: estimates of current financial condition; estimates of risk profile; and measures of the uncertainty surrounding those estimates. So far, efforts have mainly focused on the first characteristic, with the second having drawn attention only recently and the third having been largely neglected. We propose a strategy to reconcile different perspectives based on two principles: first, in the long-term, the “decoupling” of the objective of accurate financial reporting by the firm from that of instilling the desired degree of prudence in its behaviour; second, a “parallel transition” process towards that objective so that at all points the prudential measures can neutralise any undesirable implications of changes in financial reporting standards on financial stability.

We critically review the state of the art in macro stress testing, assessing its strengths and weaknesses. We argue that, given current technology, macro stress tests are ill-suited as early warning devices, i.e. as tools for identifying vulnerabilities during seemingly tranquil times and for triggering remedial action. By contrast, as long as properly designed, stress tests can be quite effective as crisis management and resolution tools. We also see additional side benefits, stemming largely from the way such tests can discipline thinking about financial stability. We suggest possible ways to improve their performance.

We present the Shapley Value as a methodology for risk attribution and use it to derive measures of banks’ systemic importance. The methodology possesses attractive properties, such as fairness and efficiency. It also leads naturally to a framework for the analysis of different drivers of systemic importance: bank size, bank-specific risk, and the commonality of banks’ exposures. We prove that, all else equal, an increase in bank size leads to a more than proportional increase in systemic importance. We also show how alternative applications of the Shapley Value methodology can be used in designing policy tools with system-wide objectives.

Few areas of monetary economics have been studied as extensively as the transmission mechanism. The literature on this topic has evolved substantially over the years, following the waxing and waning of conceptual frameworks and the changing characteristics of the financial system. In this paper, taking as a starting point a brief overview of the extant work on the interaction between capital regulation, the business cycle and the transmission mechanism, we offer some broader reflections on the characteristics of the transmission mechanism in light of the evolution of the financial system. We argue that insufficient attention has so far been paid to the link between monetary policy and the perception and pricing of risk by economic agents—what might be termed the “risk-taking channel” of monetary policy. We develop the concept, compare it with current views of the transmission mechanism, explore its mutually reinforcing link with “liquidity” and analyse its interaction with monetary policy reaction functions. We argue that changes in the financial system and prudential regulation may have increased the importance of the risk-taking channel and that prevailing macroeconomic paradigms and associated models are not well suited to capturing it, thereby also reducing their effectiveness as guides to monetary policy.

This paper analyses various issues that need to be tackled when promoting financial stability, reviewing the progress made in certain key areas and the remaining challenges. It explores the measurement of systemic risk and of individual institutions’ contribution to it. It discusses aspects of macroprudential frameworks, including how the countercyclical capital buffer envisaged in Basel III takes into account the properties of the financial cycle and the strengths and weaknesses of macro-stress tests. It analyses some of the challenges of how best to monitor financial systems and the broader economy in order to detect signs of vulnerability that might lead to future bouts of financial instability and of how to set prudential policy accordingly. And it discusses the evolution of capital adequacy standards and the new emphasis on liquidity standards in international regulation.