LAURENCE SCIALOM
Professeur(e)
2022-16
Shaky foundations Central bank independence in the 21st century
Jérôme Deyris, Gaëtan Le Quang, Laurence Scialom
- Abstract
- Central bank independence (CBI) has often been presented as a superior institutional arrangement demonstrated by economists in the 1980s for achieving a common good in a non-partisan manner. In this article, we argue that this view must be challenged. First, research in the history of economic facts and thought shows that the idea of CBI is not new, and was adopted under peculiar socio-historical conditions, in response to particular interests. Rather than an indisputable progress in economic science, CBI is the foundation for a particular configuration of the monetary regime, perishable like its predecessors. Secondly, we argue that the simplistic case imagined by the CBI theory (the setting of a single interest rate disconnected from political pressures) is long overdue. For nearly two decades, central banks have been increasing their footprint on the economy, embarking on large asset purchase programs and adopting macroprudential policies. This pro-activism forces independent central banks to constantly address new distributional - and therefore political - issues, leading to a growing number of criticisms of their actions with regard to inequality or climate change. This growing gap between theory and practices makes plausible a further shift of the institutional arrangement towards a democratization of monetary policy.
- Mot(s) clé(s)
- central bank independence, monetary policy, macroprudential policy
2020-7
Pratiques et doctrine des banques centrales au défi du changement climatique : rupture ou continuité ?
Laurence Scialom
- Abstract
- Central banks are faced with the financial challenge of climate change: on the one hand, the need for a massive reallocation of financial flows from "brown" to "green" activities and sectors and on the other hand climate related financial risks considered as systemic. Responding to this challenge will lead to profound changes in their doctrine and practices. This article shows that history is punctuated by such rapid changes in central banking. It analyses the arguments for integrating financial climate risks into central banks' doctrine and operational framework and attempts to explore what a greening of central bank actions might mean in practice.
- Mot(s) clé(s)
- central banking, climate change, climate related financial risk
2014-39
Banking Union: Time Is Not On Our Side
Adrien Béranger, Jézabel Couppey Soubeyran, Laurence Scialom
- Abstract
- This paper reviews the various mechanisms and rules that has been proposed to build a banking union in Europe. We argue that the banking union is a promising solution to the Eurozone crisis because it completes the unification of the Euro currency, forms a solution to both the financial and monetary fragmentation of the Euro area financial markets and helps breaking the vicious circle created by domestic banking system impairments and the sovereign debt crisis. We underline not only the shortcomings and hurdles to reach a fully-fledged banking union, and the hazards created by the inconsistencies between their phasing-in in the sequential schedule decided by states. To reduce the loopholes induced by the sequential approach, we propose to implement a rule of shared-bailout during the transition period that consist in a loss-sharing rule among countries hosting an entity of a bank group and indicted in the living wills of the systemic banking companies
- Mot(s) clé(s)
- Eurozone, banking union, bank supervision, resolution
2009-29
A systemic approach to financial regulation: a European perspective
Michel Aglietta, Laurence Scialom
- Abstract
- The global financial crisis has pinpointed the relevance and the virulence of systemic risk in modern innovative finance. It is grounded in the propensity of credit markets to drift to extremes in close correlation with asset price spikes and slumps. In turn, such a propensity is nurtured by the heuristic behaviour of market participants under severe uncertainty. While plagued by disaster myopia, market participants spread systemic risk. Such adverse conditions have been magnified by financial innovations that have made finance predatory and capable of capturing regulators to annihilate prudential policies. Malfunctioning in finance is so deep and disorders are so widespread that sweeping reforms are the order of the day, if financial stability is viewed as a primary public concern. In this paper we argue that macro prudential policy should be the linchpin of relevant reforms. Being a top-down approach, it impinges both upon monetary policy and micro prudential policy. Central banks should pursue a dual objective of price and financial stability. Bank supervisors should broaden their oversight on a much larger perimeter, encompassing all systematically important institutions. Counter cyclical capital provisions should be required and linked to the control of aggregate credit supply. Leveraged institutions without deposit base should be subject to incentives for a much stricter liquidity management. To stem regulatory capture, prompt corrective action should be enlarged in its scope and adapted to mark-to-market financial intermediaries. Implementing macro prudential policy entails institutional changes. Central banks, bank supervisors and other financial regulators need to work much closer than beforehand, because the spread of systemic risk is not deterred by institutional and geographical frontiers. The changes to make are particularly stringent in Europe, where national parochialism makes the resolution of orderly cross-border bank crisis all but impossible.
- Mot(s) clé(s)
2008-23
Northern Rock: The anatomy of a crisis – the prudential lessons
Sonia Ondo-Ndong, Laurence Scialom
- Abstract
- This paper attempts to analyse the main characteristics of the Northern Rock crisis and the responses of the Bank of England as lender of last resort. On the basis of the diagnosis about the causes and the handling of this banking crisis we detect the shortcomings prevailing in the UK prudential device. We therefore try to draw the prudential lessons of this experience. As we cannot claim to present an exhaustive picture of the crisis's implications from a prudential point of view, we chose to focus instead on the points with practical significance far beyond the UK's case.
- Mot(s) clé(s)
- bank bankruptcy, deposit insurance, liquidity regulation
2008-21
Permanence and innovation in central banking policy for financial stability
Michel Aglietta, Laurence Scialom
- Abstract
- In the first part of this paperer, we emphasize the adaptability and continuity of the lender-of-last-resort doctrine beyond the diversity of financial structures from the 19th century to the present day.. The second part deals with the global credit crisis and the analysis of the central banks' innovative practices during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We highlight that the lender of last resort's role is not confined to providing emergency liquidity. It aims to provide orderly deleveraging in the financial system in order to preserve the financial intermediation process. Our conclusion underlines that the crisis management has become global and strategic. It opens the way to a major regulatory and supervisory reform.
- Mot(s) clé(s)
- lender of last resort, central banking, liquidity crisis
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