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Before providing an overview of the conference with the above title and this Special Issue, this paper aims to present a view of the meaning of systemic risk, factors that affect systemic risk and measures of systemic risk. Thereafter, the conference presentations and the papers in this issue are summarized.

Characteristics and measures of systemic risk are reviewed. Conference papers and presentations are summarized.

While some aspects of systemic risk of a financial institution can be measured, an important aspect associated with contagion through markets is not easily captured by simple measures.

The conference and the papers in this issue contribute to the policy debate about sources and characteristics of systemic risk.

The purpose is to analyse how the policy approach to the immediate problems in the European financial sector has long-term effects on implicit protection of banks' creditors and, thereby, on risk-taking incentives.

The near term issues in European banking are discussed within a framework for long-term reform along the lines proposed for a European banking union.

The author advocates conducting a thorough stress test with potential consequences for unsecured creditors of banks proven to be insolvent. Losses may have to be imposed on these creditors, following the example of recent cases in Cyprus and in The Netherlands.

There is widespread consensus among international policy makers that the European banking system is seriously undercapitalized. Unlike the USA, Europe failed to recapitalize its biggest banks following the financial crisis of 2007-2009. It is now urgent to start recognizing losses on balance sheets to avoid a proliferation of Japanese-style zombie banks in Europe.

This paper aims to consider whether it is plausible to resolve troubled systemically important cross-border banks by dividing them so that the component national authorities can resolve the parts in their jurisdiction separately according to their own priorities.

The example of New Zealand is used. This country has chosen just such a route in its Open Bank Resolution (OBR) policy. The difficulties and advantages of this route to resolution are analyzed.

The paper concludes that the New Zealand route is plausible for systemic subsidiaries, providing there is deposit insurance. The minimum cost route is likely to be one where the home authority takes responsibility for the whole group and keeps all systemic operations running. It remains to be seen what the new EU-level proposals could achieve.

OBR is as yet fortunately untried although there are some examples from a smaller scheme in Denmark.

These findings have important implications for financial regulators round the world but especially in the EU as it seeks to find a similar approach in the Recovery and Resolution Directive.

This topic has not been covered by others and will add ideas of practical value to the debate. One of the major problems addressed by the Basel Committee in its approach to supervision and regulation of cross-border banks is to come up with arrangements that allow the network of national authorities to handle problems in a large cross-border bank quickly, efficiently and preferably pre-emptively without recourse simply to a major taxpayer bailout.

This paper aims to discuss factors that affect the socially optimal jurisdiction of financial supervision in the presence of economies of scale in banking.

Analysis of the trade-off between likelihood of “regulatory capture” of supervisors in a small jurisdictions and benefits of greater rates of financial innovation in a less-bureaucratized and more diverse supervisory organization.

The challenge is to create a financial supervisory institution that should be powerful enough to close down even the largest financial institutions within its jurisdiction, while at the same time not becoming so large and omnipotent that it would stifle further development of firms in financial services.

Deeper understanding of minimum efficient scales in financial intermediation required, and of regulatory capture vs efficient information acquisition from regulated units.

Basis for international (regional) cooperation in facilitating efficient delivery of financial services, in particular in smaller countries.

Developments in information technology have fundamentally changed the ways financial intermediaries operate paving the way for giant units that in key areas are able to outcompete smaller business units. The financial crisis that started in 2008 revealed that these large and interconnected organizations are in a position to extract implicit subsidies from the rest of the society. The organization of financial supervision must adapt to these changing conditions.

The recurrence of banking crises throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and in the more recent 2008‐09 global financial crisis, has led to an expanding empirical literature on crisis explanation and prediction. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical review of proxies for and important determinants of banking crises‐credit growth, financial liberalization, bank regulation and supervision.

The study surveys the banking crisis literature by comparing proxies for and measures of banking crises and policy‐related variables in the literature. Advantages and disadvantages of different proxies are discussed.

Disagreements about determinants of banking crises are in part explained by the difference in the chosen proxies used in empirical models. The usefulness of different proxies depends partly on constraints in terms of time and country coverage but also on what particular policy question is asked.

The study offers a comprehensive analysis of measurements of banking crises, credit growth, financial liberalization and banking regulations and concludes with an assessment of existing proxies and databases. Since, the review points to the choice of proxies that best fit specific research objectives, it should serve as a reference point for empirical researchers in the banking crisis area.

The purpose of this paper by the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (ESFRC) is to provide an account of the financial crisis in Europe during the period 2010-2013 and an analysis of how the relevant authorities reacted to the crisis.

These actions included measures taken by central banks, governments or fiscal authorities, and by regulatory or supervisory bodies. In a previous study covering the regulatory developments during the financial crisis up until 2009, issues such as the implementation of Basel III rules in Europe and the (mostly ad hoc and unilateral) resolution mechanisms set in most European countries to fight the crisis were covered. This study focuses on developments since 2010 with a focus on the concerns and actions that emerged with the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area. In particular, the transition from the European Financial Stability Facility to the European Stability Mechanism is assessed. The focus after 2012 has progressively turned to the challenges of the European banking union.

These issues are jointly covered, along with some updates on the views of the ESFRC on recent advances in other areas, such as solvency regulation. All in all, the authors find that the weaknesses of the global financial system remain to be addressed, and they believe that the banking union is one of the main tools and opportunities for an improved and efficient crisis management in Europe.

The paper aims at contributing to the study of financial regulation after the banking crisis. The experience of the euro zone in this context is assessed in this article from a wide range of perspectives.

The study examines the roles of capital rules, macro variables and bank business models in determining the safety of banks as measured by the “distance-to-default” (DTD) with the purpose of drawing implications for regulation of bank capital and business models.

A panel regression study using pre- and post-crisis data for 108 US and European banks is used to explore the issue empirically. A new technique is also used to back out the amount of capital banks would have needed during the crisis to keep the “DTD” in the very safe zone.

The simple leverage ratio has a strong relationship with “DTD”, while the Basel ratio does not. The most important business model features are derivatives and wholesale funding, which have a strong negative relationship with “DTD”. Trading and available-for-sale securities have a positive influence. Calculations show that it is not possible for any reasonable capital rule to compensate for the risks created by business model features encompassing large derivative-based activities. Bank separation policies are essential.

The micro evidence-based analysis as an approach to bank regulation and business model requirements stands in contrast to the ad hoc way policy has been constructed before and after the crisis. The empirical evidence supports separation based on the balance sheet size of derivatives and a leverage ratio instead of the complex Basel risk-weighted capital approach. The current approaches to structural separation are criticised constructively, and some evidence-based suggestions for improving bank business models to reduce systemic risk are made.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether and how “living wills” and public disclosure of such resolution plans contribute to market discipline and the effective resolution of too big and too complex to fail banks.

The disorderly collapse of Lehman Brothers is analyzed. Large, systemically important banks are now required to prepare resolution plans (living wills). In the USA, parts of the living wills must be disclosed to the public. The public component is analyzed with respect to contribution to market discipline and effective resolution of banks considered too big and complex to fail. In a statistical analysis of the publicly available section of living wills, this information is contrasted with legislative requirements.

The analysis of public disclosures of resolution plans shows that they are insufficient to facilitate market discipline and, in some instances, fail to enhance public understanding of the financial institution and its business. When coupled with the uncertainty over how an internationally active financial institution will be resolved, the paper concludes that these reforms will do little to reduce market expectations that some financial firms are simply too big or too complex to fail.

A very small data set and the necessity of cross-checking the authors' observations with all publicly available sources. The authors have also tried to infer a purpose for public disclosure of parts of resolution plans. The authorities are remarkably vague on the issue and so the authors have assumed they actually did have a specific intent that would strengthen the system.

The inference from the publicly available portion of living wills is that the authorities are a very long way from abolishing too-big-to-fail.

So far as the authors know, this is the first in-depth analysis of the information available in the public sections of living wills.