One important cause of the 2007-2009 crisis was illiquidity combined with exposure of many financial institutions to liquidity needs. But what is liquidity and why is it so important for financial institutions to command enough liquidity? This book brings together classic articles and recent contributions to this important field.

Bank Liquidity Creation and Financial Crises delivers a consistent, logical presentation of bank liquidity creation and addresses questions of research and policy interest that can be easily understood by readers with no advanced or specialized industry knowledge. Authors Allen Berger and Christa Bouwman examine ways to measure bank liquidity creation, how much liquidity banks create in different countries, the effects of monetary policy (including interest rate policy, lender of last resort, and quantitative easing), the effects of capital, the effects of regulatory interventions, the effects of bailouts, and much more. They also analyze bank liquidity creation in the US over the past three decades during both normal times and financial crises. Narrowing the gap between the "academic world" (focused on theories) and the "practitioner world" (dedicated to solving real-world problems), this book is a helpful new tool for evaluating a bank’s performance over time and comparing it to its peer group. Explains that bank liquidity creation is a more comprehensive measure of a bank’s output than traditional measures and can also be used to measure bank liquidity Describes how high levels of bank liquidity creation may cause or predict future financial crises Addresses questions of research and policy interest related to bank liquidity creation around the world and provides links to websites with data and other materials to address these questions Includes such hot-button topics as the effects of monetary policy (including interest rate policy, lender of last resort, and quantitative easing), the effects of capital, the effects of regulatory interventions, and the effects of bailouts

One of the lessons learned from the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–9 is that minimum capital requirements are a necessary but inadequate safeguard for the stability of an intermediary. Despite the high levels of capitalization of many banks before the crisis, they too experienced serious difficulties due to insufficient liquidity buffers. Thus, for the first time, after the GFC regulators realized that liquidity risk can jeopardize the orderly functioning of a bank and, in some cases, its survival. Previously, the risk did not receive the same attention by regulators at the international level as other types of risk including credit, market, and operational risks. The GFC promoted liquidity risk to a significant place in regulatory reform, introducing uniform international rules and best practices. The literature has studied the potential effects of the new liquidity rules on the behaviour of banks, the financial system, and the economy as a whole. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the bank liquidity crisis that occurred during the GFC, of the liquidity regulatory reform introduced by the Basel Committee with the Basel III Accord, and its implications both at the micro and macroeconomic levels. Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore contributed to the funding of this research project and its publication.

This book explores the effect of liquidity on asset prices, liquidity variations over time and how liquidity risk affects prices.

This book presents the Clarendon Lectures in Finance by one of the leading exponents of financial booms and crises. Hyun Song Shin's work has shed light on the global financial crisis and he has been a central figure in the policy debates. The paradox of the global financial crisis is that it erupted in an era when risk management was at the core of the management of the most sophisticated financial institutions. This book explains why. The severity of the crisis is explained by financial development that put marketable assets at the heart of the financial system, and the increased sophistication of financial institutions that held and traded the assets. Step by step, the lectures build an analytical framework that take the reader through the economics behind the fluctuations in the price of risk and the boom-bust dynamics that follow. The book examines the role played by market-to-market accounting rules and securitisation in amplifying the crisis, and draws lessons for financial architecture, financial regulation and monetary policy. This book will be of interest to all serious students of economics and finance who want to delve beneath the outward manifestations to grasp the underlying dynamics of the boom-bust cycle in a modern financial system - a system where banking and capital market developments have become inseparable.

An examination of Liquidity Crunch in triggering and characterizing financial crises. Since the subprime mortgage crisis that began in 2007, advanced economies have felt a nagging sense of insecurity. In parallel, the profession has witnessed phenomena that are alien to mainstream macroeconomic models. Financial crises are systemic, occurring simultaneously in different economies. In this book, Guillermo Calvo focuses on liquidity factors as a commonality in financial crises. Specifically, he examines the role of “liquidity crunch” in triggering crises. He also identifies a fundamental (but overlooked) idea in Keynes's General Theory, termed by Calvo the price theory of money, to rationalize the resiliency of the U.S. dollar when other dollar-backed assets suffered a devastating liquidity crunch. Calvo shows that a sharp focus on liquidity reveals some characteristics of liquid assets that are easy to miss otherwise. He argues for liquidity's centrality, presenting what he calls the Liquidity Approach. He shows that simple extensions of standard monetary models help rationalize the implications of the liquidity crunch, and then examines slightly more technical models that highlight liquidity issues. He explores the empirical effects of liquidity crunch by studying systemic sudden stops (of capital inflows), presuming that they are triggered by liquidity crunch-type phenomena.

Tirole analyzes the current views on financial crises and on the reform of the international financial architecture. Based on the Paolo Baffi Lecture the author delivered at the Bank of Italy, this refreshingly accessible book is teeming with rich insights that researchers, policy makers, and students at all levels will find indispensable.