← Search

Journal of Financial Stability Vol. 1 No. 3 2005

Bank stability and transparency

Erlend Nier

Bank of England

Abstract

A number of recent policy initiatives have called for enhanced transparency of banking firms. While the hope is that enhanced transparency may improve incentives ex ante, it is less clear whether transparency is necessarily a good thing ex post, when a bank might have hit hard times and provision of information could have a destabilising effect. This paper provides a synopsis of these different effects and provides some new, bank-level evidence in an attempt to clarify empirically whether, taking ex ante and ex post effects together, transparency is likely to reduce or increase bank stability. The analysis suggests that, on balance, transparency reduces the chance of severe banking problems and thus enhances overall financial stability.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfs.2005.02.007
Volume
1
Issue
3
Pages
342-354
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite