I. INTRODUCTION
Before the global financial crisis, financial regulation largely took the form of microprudential policies
and centered on monitoring prudential risks to individual institutions. As such, financial regulation
failed to consider the buildup of macroeconomic risks and vulnerabilities that could pose systemic risk
by destabilizing a number of institutions simultaneously. The global financial crisis underlined an
urgent need for financial regulatory authorities to identify and monitor early on the buildup of
macroeconomic risks that could threaten the financial system. Such early detection and prevention
requires strong macroprudential policy measures—for example, caps on the loan-to-value (LTV)
ratio—designed to mitigate financial stability risks that stem from vulnerabilities building up in the
broader financial system.
A macroprudential approach has two dimensions: a time dimension and a cross-sectional
dimension (Borio 2010). In the time dimension, the source of system-wide distress can be the
procyclicality of the financial system. That is, financial institutions and markets overexpose themselves
to risks during an upswing in the financial cycle and then become overly risk averse during a downswing
leaving the entire financial system and economy vulnerable to booms and busts. On the other hand,
the cross-sectional dimension of systemic risk arises from the interconnectedness of financial
institutions and markets that can result in joint vulnerabilities and failures of financial institutions, i.e.
when the actions and problems of individuals or financial institutions have spillover effects on the
overall financial system. Given their interconnectedness, the contemporary market-based finance
sector should be thought of not only as the deposit-taking, loan-making activities of commercial banks
but also as investment banks, money market funds, insurance firms, and other financial institutions.
This paper presents the basic framework of an empirical analysis to gauge how effectively
macroprudential policies target credit-, liquidity-, and capital-related financial stability risks. The
framework looks at the impact of three different types of macroprudential policies on three key
indicators of financial stability: credit growth, leverage growth, and housing price escalation. We
document the macroprudential tightening policies that 10 developing Asian economies have actually
used.
An important innovation in this paper is to apply the qualitative vector autoregressive
regression (Qual VAR) model to estimate the latent propensity to three types of macroprudential
policy measures and then to generate the dynamic impulse responses of financial stability indicators
with respect to the macroprudential policy measures. Overall, our results suggest that credit-related
macroprudential policy instruments can effectively dampen credit expansion and housing price
inflation while liquidity-related macroprudential policy tools moderate leverage growth and housing
price escalation.
II. MACROPRUDENTIAL POLICY: CONCEPTUAL BASIS AND LITERATURE REVIEW
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is increasingly guided by the need for a macroprudential
perspective on financial regulation in addition to the traditional microprudential perspective. Although
progress has been made on the regulatory front—especially with Basel III tightening the rules on the
quantity and quality of bank capital including the requirement of a countercyclical capital buffer—
regulations apply to only some financial institutions. In contrast, macroprudential policy aims to limit
the buildup of risk in the entire financial system and to enhance its resilience following shocks. Efforts