Financial Regulation and Supervision in Emerging Markets The Experience of Latin America Since the Macro-Economy of Development, No. 9

The financial crisis of 1994-1995 sounded a wake-up call to Latin America, indicating that regulation and supervision needed to be strengthened substantially. Since then, important steps have been taken to set rules and ensure their implementation, but financial regulation and supervision do not take place in a vacuum. On the one hand, they must be consistent with domestic macroeconomic policies. On the other hand, they have to take into account the new international rules being proposed by multilateral agencies. And, all of this must be done in the context of scarce resources, especially trained personnel. This paper looks at these problems from the viewpoint of the Latin American region as a whole and four individual country case studies. The conclusion is that there has been considerable improvement in the banking regulation and supervision since 1994-1997, but that macroeconomic turbulence continues to pose challenges to the stability of the banking sector.Stallings, Barbara is the author of 'Financial Regulation and Supervision in Emerging Markets The Experience of Latin America Since the Macro-Economy of Development, No. 9' with ISBN 9789211213409 and ISBN 9211213401.