Abstract
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has made the study of regulating the financial sector gain renewed attention. Adverse shocks, like the pandemic, impact the economy rather infrequently, but if the amplifying effects and systemic risks of the financial sector are reduced, the macroeconomic variables will be less affected when they do occur. This thesis seeks to investigate the implemented macroprudential policy regimes post the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, and whether the implemented regimes are in line with economic literature on this field. Germany, India, Norway and USA are chosen as sample because of their different connections to the Basel Committee, different international obligations and different regulatory predispositions. The thesis performs a two folded literature review, first a benchmark policy regime is created through a literature review on economic research on macroprudential policy. Then, the policy regimes of the four countries are investigated through reviewing their individual implementation qualitatively. Finally, their post crisis implemented macroprudential policy regimes are assed against the benchmark policy regime. The research question is: to what extent can the implemented post-crisis policy regimes be considered to be consistent with the macroprudential literature? The thesis discovered a tendency to implement regulations on borrowers in different ways, not in line with the benchmark, while bank regulation is to a large extent consistent with Basel III. However, the application of the countercyclical capital buffer differs between the countries although they have implemented similar rules of utilization. On the regulation of shadow-banks, with exception of leverage ratio and NSFR, there are no specific regulations like a «haircut» requirement, which is inconsistent with the benchmark.